Rating:  - Solid material but not easy to read
Cascading Style Sheets
Eric A. Meyer
ISBN: 0-596-00525-3
This book is packed full of information about CSS. There are chapters devoted to each general category of CSS such as fonts, text, blocks, borders, etc.
One item that could be improved is the chapter headings. Most O'Reilly books put the chapter at the top of each page, so at any time you can glance up to the top of the page you are reading and orient yourself. This book only lists the chapter title on the first page of the chapter and in the TOC. In a fiction tome, this probably would not be a big deal, but I rarely read reference books in an orderly fashion preferring to skim to the subject I need assistance on at the moment. Not having the chapter headings on each page makes this much more difficult.
The book does have a generous amount of info on CSS and nice appendices. Appendix A on properties is particularly useful.
Rating:  - Not a book for beginners
I had to buy this book for an Intro to Web Design class and many of my classmates and I agreed that this is not an easy book to follow. It dives into details without laying out the most basics first. In general, the lack of structure and more complicated than necessary language was confusing and maybe one with previous CSS knowledge would know what he's talking about but for a beginner it was quite unhelpful.
Rating: - More of a Tutorial than a Definitive Guide
If you are not using Cascading Style Sheets in your own HTML documents, you should consider them. They will save you hours of tedious formatting time. CSS allows you to control every aspect of the formatting and display of your website, without having to "touch" each page individually.
This book is great for someone who has never worked with CSS before. It is very easy to read, and leads you through some very good examples that show how to use CSS for what it does best.
As some reviewers have pointed out, this is not a reference book. It is not well suited to some who is already well versed in CSS, as it will take you awhile to find the exact item of information you are looking for. However, for learning CSS, in the first place, this book does a good job.
1. CSS and Documents
2. Selectors
3. Structure and the Cascade
4. Values and Units
5. Fonts
6. Text Properties
7. Basic Visual Formatting
8. Padding, Borders and Margins
9. Colors and Backgrounds
10. Floating and Positioning
11. Table Layout
12. Lists and Generated Content
13. User Interface Styles
14. Non-Screen Media
Rating:  - Great technical reference
CSS is the science and engineering behind the art of display. Meyer's book is a great resource for understanding that science. It is one of the few books allotted a place on my desk.
Written much like a programming book, it explains in logical steps exactly how the rules of CSS work. It is not a picture book: it does little to help someone design a website as that is not the intent. What the book does superbly is give the reader a detailed understanding of how to correctly construct a well designed (or not so well designed) website.
Because it examines the theory and logic underlying CSS, many portions of the book require thought and concentration to read. Some paragraphs seem quite difficult to follow at first glance, but the reason for this is that the ideas being conveyed are subtle and oftentimes complex. I found the book to be slow reading, much along the lines of a physics text, because a great deal of information is being conveyed in a small space.
My CSS code is much cleaner, and my coding and debugging time greatly reduced, as a result of *studying* this book.
Rating: - Not impressed at all
I read a lot of good things about Eric Meyers and people say he's practically like the king of CSS teachers or something. I read reviews from amazon about this book and decided it was time I read this book.
At first, it seemed like a good book, explaining core concepts of CSS to me. I've been using it for years, but never really had a book teach me everything, I picked it up as I went along.
However, as I reached further into the book, the topics became more complicated and his explanations became weaker and weaker. There are no practical examples. I was hoping to get some insight in the way certain code could be used but instead, this was more like a help/reference manual which made me wonder why I even needed this book in that case when there are great help/reference manuals all over the Internet.
I thought reading this book would make me like Mr. Meyer's apprentice, to learn from the master. It was like going to an experienced carpenter and being told "This is a hammer, u hit nails with it." and then leaving. I was looking for more like "this is a hammer, notice how if I hit it hard it causes a dent in the wood, but a soft touch allows you to keep an even wood surface, use least amount of energy and still get the job done."
I learnt more about CSS from other books that were nothing more than basic introductions.
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