Since 1996, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) has been the standard language for describing the layout of Web pages. This classic, fully four-color book explains how to use the latest release of the CSS language, with clear and practical examples for each CSS language element. And more than just the "how," the book also explains the "why" behind the design of each CSS element, ensuring that readers have the understanding they need to create their own CSS libraries.The foreward is written by Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with WebStandards and Taking Your Talent to the Web.

In this updated edition to their original best-selling classic, the co-creators of CSS clearly, logically, and painlessly explain the hows and whys and ins and outs of the visual formatting language that is their gift to us. The Web would be a poorer place without Messieurs Bos and Lie. Your shelf will be richer for the addition of this book.

Rely on it. Study it. Savor it.

The Indispensible CSS Tutorial and Reference—Straight from the Creators of CSS

Direct from the creators of CSS, this is the definitive guide to CSS, today's indispensable standard for controlling the appearance of any Web or XML document. This book doesn't just show how to use every significant CSS 1 and 2.x feature; it carefully explains the "why" behind today's most valuable CSS design techniques. You'll find practical, downloadable examples throughout—along with essential browser support information and best practices for building high-impact pages and applications.

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web, Third Edition covers every CSS 2.1 improvement and fix, from new height/width definitions in absolutely positioned elements to new clip property calculations. Clear, readable, and thorough, it's the one must-have CSS resource for every Web developer, designer, and content provider. Coverage includes

• Mastering essential CSS concepts: Rules, declarations, selectors, properties, and more

• Working with type: From absolute/relative units to font size and weight

• Understanding CSS objects: Box model, display properties, list styles, and more

• Exercising total control over spacing and positioning

• Specifying colors for borders and backgrounds

• Managing printing: Margins, page breaks, and more

• Implementing media-specific style sheets for audio rendering, handhelds, and other forms of presentation

• Moving from HTML extensions to CSS: Five practical case studies

• Making the most of cascading and inheritance

• Using external style sheets and @import

• Integrating CSS with XML documents

• Optimizing the performance of CSS pages

• Includes a handy CSS Quick Reference printed on the inside covers

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Cascading Style Sheets, Third Edition, Designing for the Web Since its introduction in 1996, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has revolutionized web page design. Now, in 2004, most web pages use CSS, and many designers base their layouts entirely on CSS. To do so successfully requires a good understanding of how CSS works. The purpose of this book is to describe how designers can take full advantage of CSS 2.1, which is the newly released update of the specification. CSS s journey from an idea to a specification and then on to a specification designers can rely on has been long and arderous. The creator of the CSS Zen Garden (described in Chapter 12, "From HTML extenstions to CSS") describes it this way: Littering a dark and dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific tags, incompatible DOMs, and broken CSS support. Today, we must clear the mind of past practices. Web enlightenment has been achieved thanks to the tireless efforts of folk like the W3C, WaSP and the major browser 1 creators. Indeed, we believe the web is a more enlightened place now that CSS have matured to a stage where it can be used for advanced layouts in a range of browsers. This book will tell you all you need to know to start using CSS. /> class="navigation"> Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Not the best choice
There are many books to learn CSS, but this is not your best option. This is a dry read. And it’s exclusive use of css embedded in HTML pages defies the purpose of CSS, which is to create a uniform look across a collection of pages. Embedded in the HTML, CSS becomes merely an upgrade to HTML.

Clearest and most informative book I’ve read on CSS
I am in a beginning html and css class at a college, and have checked out numerous books from the library on html and css, all of which have their good and bad points. One other recommended book was good only after you got past the introductory 100 pages, which included history of html, as well as touting their friends’ books. Too many of the books try to be funny, which is not what you need from a good computer book. I came across this book accidentally at the library. It may be written by "computer geeks," but it explained clearly what CSS is and how it fits in with html, gives all the correct terms for selectors and such (for us new users), tells you when something is case sensitive or not, and gives clear examples of good code and how it will show in a browser. I finally grasped what the em unit is and how and why its used, and the difference between class and ID attributes. My only complaint are the typos, but they were mostly obvious and haven’t caused me any problems yet. I got this book at the library, but plan on ordering a copy to keep and highlight!! I think this book is great for beginner through intermediate users.

Brilliant for IT people wanting to get into CSS
If you are an IT person, or someone with an IT mindset, and you want to get into CSS, this book is for you. This is the best for you. This book does presume knowledge of markup (HTML/XHTML).

However, this book does not cover advanced layout, which was never really included in CSS (there is hope in CSS3). Discussions of layout will need to be found in other resources.

On the other hand, if you are an artsy person who likes to learn by doing, this book is not for you. It would be better if you searched for Eric Meyer on CSS, which takes you through implementing CSS on a project like basis. Eric Meyer on CSS does presume knowledge of markup (HTML/XHTML) however.

Good Choice for the CSS beginner and up
This book is a well written introduction into the world of css and pinpoints key concepts of css. It’s by far one of the most readable texts that I have picked up out of all the technical books I’ve read in my few years of being alive. The book lacks a little in having some references to an example on a previous page while the reference to it is one to pages after the example. This discrepency is understood though since it is hard to keep everything together and not spill out onto other pages when planning the layout of a book. Overall this is a good book on css, and I would recommend it to anyone wishing to start into css.

Good book but irritating typos
I would have given this book atleast 4 stars if it weren’t for the misleading typos! here’s a few - Chapter 6 Pg 127 refers to Figure 6.2 (which doesn’t exist!) instead of Figure 6.3; Chatper 10 Pg 228 the example "H1 {color: #ff000 }" is plain wrong (needs a extra zero at the end) and will not work.

Otherwise, it is a very good book. I especially like Chapter 4 - describes CSS selectors in great detail.

Great resouce for new to css
ritten by the authors of CSS, at first I found it a bit heavy in dialogue and backgrounds. Not until you open the book to the index does one actually realize the wealth of information in the book. Do not expect this book to show examples of the next great page, but as a resource in trouble shooting it helped explain alot of questions I either was too lazy to look up in Dreamweaver Help or couldnt find the right type of answer elsewhere. My level is pretty much entry intermediate, but with this book, it took me a bit higher. I am getting rid of my introductory CSS books and using this one as my main go to guide.

CSS is covered in detail (20 pages on CSS colour alone) and the explainations are straight forward. The most valuable chapter is "Spaces around boxes". Running over 30 pages, this is a well thumbed section that explained to me where I was going wrong with a layout CSS I was doggedly trying to force to do what I wanted. Once I went through this section, it became clear my folly.

This book now has an honour of being well coffee stained and front and center on my resource shelf.

Speaks with an authority as no other
I have gotten each edition of this book as it came out -- giving the still valuable previous edition to the most worthy co-worker. This book (whatever edition!) is rightly regarded as one that belongs by the desk of the astute and experienced Web worker.

When the first edition came out, I rejected it for another book on CSS. I figured that a book explaining CSS by the W3C alpha geeks who *created* the CSS recommendation would be too technical and unreadable. I learned how wrong I was. Lie and Bos’s classic book turns out to be one of the most readable and clear treatments of CSS you can obtain.

I can agree that if you have a previous edition, there probably is no compelling reason to update. Some explanations have been elaborated and browser compatibility is updated for Firefox. The core value remains the same: simple enough for novices, detailed enough for experts.

Given the relation of the authors to the official work of the W3C, the book speaks with an authority as no other.

Cascading Style becomes a Reality
When a developer is in the middle of a project, what is needed is a guidebook that is short, well-written and organized logically. The book must also contain plenty of examples that are specific to the current chapter section, leaving out other confusing cross-references.

Cascading Style Sheets by Lie and Bos does all of the above. The book can be read cover-to-cover, or used as a reference as needed. I rarely had to use the index to find a subject, because the chapters are well-named and stick to their subject. This is rare.

The authors have exceptional credentials, authoring technical and exacting specifications for CSS. Yet they wrote a book that is clear and understandable for us mere mortals. Every web developer should have a copy.

Very good, not perfect
This is a great CSS guide and reference. It has something for all skill levels.

Beforehand I thought the book would only be a technical (code-centered) guide to CSS, but it turned out to contain many practical design tips as well. I would say it is useful for both beginners and advanced website designers. If you’re new to CSS, this book gives a great introduction to the subject, and if you’ve been in the game for a while you’ll most likely find there were several handy, nifty little features of CSS 2.1 you didn’t know about. (I thought I knew basically what there was to know about CSS, but the book has already tought me several new and useful things.)

The book is logically laid out and divided into chapters. One very useful feature is the complete list of CSS 2.1 properties found on the inside cover, as well as the browser compatibility information listed for each property. (Although I’ve found the latter to be slightly misleading at times. Specifically, the book claims that Firefox understands the ’quotes’ property properly, while it quite obviously doesn’t.)

After six years, an inconsequential update
If you already have the 2nd edition of this book, don’t bother purchasing the 3rd, as little of the content has changed.

Only very light edits have been made to the text. The coding examples remain the same - after six years. The order of the chapters has been slightly rearranged, and two outdated chapters (on WebFonts and aural style sheets) have been dropped. Color illustrations are used less frequently, hurting the clarity of the examples; and the page layout is not as clean. On the positive side, entries in the "CSS quick reference" (on the inside cover) now refer to the correct page numbers in the book. And of course the browser compatability charts, noting which browsers support which CSS features, have been updated: Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1, Opera 7.2, Safari 1, and the Prince 4 CSS formatter are now covered.

If you have not used previous editions of this book, read through the comments made about the 2nd edition, as much of what was said there still applies here. This remains a decent CSS coding reference, but frankly, I refer to Elizabeth Castro’s "HTML for the World Wide Web, 5th edition" far more frequently.