November 17, 2006

Book Review: CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

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CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Andy Budd with Cameron Moll and Simon Collison

CSS Mastery, written by Andy Budd with Cameron Moll and Simon Collison, is perfect for all levels of CSS users; from novices to experts, there’s something in the book for everyone to learn.

CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets, which, when used with HTML, gives web developers more control over how pages are displayed. It also allows the developer to control global styles with one file. For example, if you need to change a color or column width on 100 pages, simply change the CSS file and you’re done. CSS is a very powerful tool, and current trends in web design and development show that it will replace table-based designs.

The foundation of great CSS skills lies in constructing meaningful markup, i.e. code. I can hear many WYSIWYG web designers screaming, “NO!! Not HAND-CODING!!!” While Dreamweaver is great at visually creating table-based layouts, CSS requires a bit more hand coding… ok, a LOT more hand coding. But the rewards of learning this layout method are far greater than the drawbacks. Easy to manage sites, better search engine optimization, faster loading pages and more accessibility are just a few reasons you should be designing with CSS.

Anyone can jump into this book without any knowledge of CSS and learn quickly (putting all fears aside), but a little knowledge of HTML, XHTML and CSS will certainly help in grasping the key concepts outlined. Read more