Rating:  - Latest version is now out (Mar, 2004)
Make sure you get the latest version (ISBN#: 0-596-00525-3) which was released in March of 2004.
Some other reviews discuss the fact that this book is out of date. It WAS, but not any more.
Definitely look into this book as your reference for the latest in Cascading Style Sheets by THE guru of CSS.
Rating:  - Great Explanation of CSS
Though I had a basic knowledge of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), I did not know the full power of them. CSS has the ability to do many things, but basically the strength of it over plain HTML is that you are able to define a "style" to be applied to your whole website. To change the look and feel, you simply change a few lines in your style sheet and your whole site is updated. CSS can be used even if you have a site that consists of just one page.
Eric Meyer's book will put you on your way to using CSS. A basic knowledge of HTML is helpful to understand the first part of the book. He jumps into the book as if this was a sequel to a book he just finished on HTML. He takes for granted that you understand how pages are built.
Typical of many technical books, the information is often repeated so that you can jump into any chapter and get the basic information of how to make it work. That said, I only found one place in the book where he actually tells you how to link to a style sheet. Therefore, you need to read much of the introductory material.
If you have an understanding of CSS and this is going to be a reference work, you will not be disappointed.
Rating:  - Excelent book, but not up to date anymore
As almost all O'Reilly books, this is a great technical book. Great info, great index, and great organization. The author is a CSS guru. Unfortunatelly the contents aren't up to date with the current browser technology. The 2000 edition doesn't even know about the newst Mozilla versions (a.k.a. Netscape 6). Wait for a newer edition, or buy another one.
Rating: - a great intro to css
If you ever wanted to learn about css this is the place to start. Eric not only covers all of css1 and an intro into css2, he warns you of all the caveats regarding browser combatibility.
After you read this book and follow it up with his book on web design, you'll have all you need . Not only can you throw out alot of your html code, but css can give you a workaround where html doesn't seem to have the answer.
Eric also gives alot of good online sources where you can find tricks for applying css, as well.
And finally, he writes in a style that is more like reading a novel then a text book.
Rating: - Excellent Book
I learned CSS from this book. It's probably not the best book for an introduction to CSS, but it worked quite well for me. As part of O'Reilly's Definitive Guide series, the book has a format which is awkward for a beginning text. These books are meant to be encyclopedic in coverage, so every topic gets discussed down to the last arcane detail before you move on to the next one. That's probably not the approach I would take if I were teaching a course on the subject. But that was probably not the intent of the book.
The odd thing was, the writing was so good that the book worked quite will as an introduction. Eric Meyer is one of the world's top experts on CSS, and he is also a marvelous writer. That is an unusual combination, and one that readers should take note of. Over time, I will probably acquire all of Meyer's books. He is that good.
Don't expect this to be the only book you need on the subject. The web is a fast changing medium, and books tend to lag behind the material that is accumulating on the web itself. There is excellent materail on sites like zeldman.com, meyerweb.com, alistapart.com, webmonkey.com and elsewhere. There are also other books which take different approaches, which will fill in some of the gaps. That is to be expected; no one book can do it all.
Unfortunately, the book is getting a little outdated. Many modern browsers are supporting CSS2 by now, and proposals for CSS3 are already circulating. Meyer is already at work on the second edition. We all have something to look forward to.
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