Rating: 

My background in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is minimal. I have taken two half day classes at our local university and I have no experience in practical usage of CSS. I am very comfortable with HTML coding but often use a WYSIWYG application to make functional no frills sites listing reference information. The book The Art & Science of CSS (published by Sitepoint) is very good for beginner to medium skill level users to pick up and work through. The title led me to believe that I was going to be exposed to practical methodology of adding well thought out design to my web site. The book did not disappoint.

In the Navigation chapter there were four ways to build navigation shown (basic-no frills horizontal, vertical, vertical with tabs, vertical with graphics). This is just one example of how the book walks the user through several levels of the sample project, each one displaying a good visual presence on its own. The book takes these presences and slowly builds off each producing even a better visual piece. Building skill upon skill is a wonderful learning process. I got the feeling of a natural progression of working on a project. You work awhile, analyze the results and see where you need to make it better, then work some more.

Several sections mentioned or displayed how different browsers will view content. A fix was provided for those occurrences where the differences were unacceptable. Other sections worked through a thought process pointing out the good and the bad about alternatives. There were several references on how to alter code that complies with screenreader usage.

A slight touch of humor was scattered throughout the book such as a “grasshopper” reference from a 70’s TV series titled Kung Fu. Yes, I’m old enough to have watched it-but I was very young. I was amused how throughout the book they kept giving me ways to stop using tables to format data and in the end showed how to make tables shine in ways tables where intended to be used. Is there anything I didn’t like about the book? No, I really can’t think of anything. It prompted you to a web site where you can download material to walk through the examples. I will need to go over certain sections of the book again so I fully grasp individual details but I will assume this is because of my lack of skill with using CSS. I highly recommend this book and feel that it will help users take control of their web site…GOODBYE TEMPLATES!