Rating:  - Cook up a CSStorm with this reference
If you're not familiar with O'Reilly's cookbook series (...), they're books with a basic formula: Problem, Solution, and Discussion sections for every 'recipe.' The link takes you to an image showing how the format looks. Each recipe is a script, program, command, or piece of code for implementing within a large part of a whole.
In CSS Cookbook, get recipes for using CSS to create pull quotes, to add a background image, to build various types of layouts, and to manage forms. It is not about building a Web site from scratch, but getting bite-sized markup for implementing pieces of the site.
This book is for those who know HTML and have a basic understanding of CSS. Like any food cookbook, the recipes are there when you're ready for them. It's not for reading from cover to cover. When you get stuck on a problem or want to know how to create a printer-friendly page, refer to the recipe.
The main issue with the book is its use of tables in some of the recipes. With the growing number of Web sites moving towards Web standards compliance, tables are finally going away as a layout tool. Their only purpose is for organizing data.
Don't expect recipes on fly-out or drop down menus. This is not a bad thing as CSS is not the ideal way to create such menus as there are many problems with implementing them. So it is understandable why they were not included. If you want to learn how to do these menus, there are many resources on the Internet showing how.
The book could use more recipes as others in the Cookbook series have 400, 500, and even 700 pages. This one is just 270 pages.
As in his other books, Schmitt does an excellent job of explaining each problem and solution with his minimal jargon and easy writing style. The table of contents (...) provides the list of the types of problems covered in this book. If these are things you wish to implement, then you'll be happy with the purchase.
Rating: - Great for the designer's shelf!
I am becoming a serious fan of the Cookbooks from O'Reilly. They are well-organized, have lots of great tips and recipes, and don't get bogged down in detail, but still give enough insight to be useful when expanding the ideas.
The CSS Cookbook from Christopher Schmitt is no exception. It is aimed at developers who know a bit about CSS, but need some reference to solve specific problems, and who wish to view alternate methods to common situations. While this book will not teach you CSS, it is a great desk reference to jog your memory, or reveal some new trick.
Overall, the CSS Cookbook starts with some basic ideas about typography on the web, something that every designer should be aware of, if not devoted to. It then hits all the usual suspects, including page elements, links and navigation, tables, etc (all listed on the back cover). They way this book is broken down may take a little getting used to, since the focus is more on individual approaches to design ideas, rather than a master list of common complete page layouts. However, the last 3rd of the book gives some great overall information about complete designs, compatibility considerations, and some bit of theory about using CSS effectively.
Language in this book is neutral, but conversational. It may not have you curled up by a fire on a chilly evening, but it gets the points across very well. Schmitt seems to hit a nice stride with giving you useful information without making it dry or giving in to bad jokes and punch-in-the-arm commentary. Not that these last things are necessarily bad, they just aren't in Schmitt's book. That helps make it a great tool to keep close by.
Something that's near and dear to my heart is replacing tables with appropriate CSS-Positioning elements. Schmitt does a good job balancing the argument about when to use tables versus divs. While I prefer to use tables for banging my shin against, they are still quite widely used, and merit consideration in certain circumstances. One highlight is his elegant use of styled tables to build a nice-looking calendar. This is something many people will find very useful.
Other highlights include a great section on column layouts. Not only are the recipes given, but time is also allowed for consideration of challenges with each style, and why some workarounds may be necessary. Another favourite is making print-friendly pages, including forms. Resumes, help files, and reference material could all benefit from such a treatment when presented online.
I think a pretty good middle range of designers would greatly benefit from the CSS Cookbook, and some advanced people who just need a new idea or refresher now and then. Certainly, one could find more technical or theoretical books on CSS, such as in the Definitive Guide series from O'Reilly, or the W3C-endorsed 'Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web' by Lie and Bos. But for practicality, quick solutions, and some great ideas, the CSS Cookbook is a great tool for any designer's collection.
I'd say run down to your local bookstore, or check out some of the sample text on O'Reilly's site and consider putting this one on your shelf.
Rating:  - CSS Recipes only half-baked
Of the various recipe-style books about CSS that have appeared in recent times, this one is probably the best. It covers a variety of realistic requirements, from "web typography" (large first letters, highlighted first lines, fancy pull quotes etc) to several different kinds of menus and multi-column page layouts. Most of the recipes are short but they are also largely self-contained, making them very quick and easy to use. This format makes me prefer Schmitt's effort to some comparable works, such as Eric Meyer's two colorful volumes, Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS.
That said, however, potential buyers of the book should be warned that it has some glaring omissions. While Explorer-like collapsible menus and tab-style horizontal menus are explained, there is no recipe for drop-down or "fly-out" menus. The chapters on table styling and print stylesheets are rather thin, and the chapter on Hacks and Workarounds makes no mention of Internet Explorer's conditional comments, which, being deliberately-designed browser features, seem like more durable tools than the parsing bugs on which most hacks are based.
These omissions might be understandable if space was at a premium, but at 252 pages, the book is short compared with most other titles from O'Reilly's cookbook series. And one wonders why, if useful things had to be left out, the author could still find room for a Javascript-based technique for producing that most annoying of web phenomena, blinking text.
In the end, I would still recommend the book for people who find that they have to use CSS occasionally, rather than on a daily basis. But the buyer should still be prepared to spend time trawling the web in search of solutions to many problems.
Rating: - Interesting CSS solutions, but a little thin
I think I'd generally agree with the previous positive reviews. You should already be familiar with CSS, JavaScript and HTML - this is not a CSS starter book. It's more geared toward start to finish answers for common CSS questions, most of which I found I could easily adapt to my level of understanding. There is an in-depth description about how to create a very nice looking calendar with CSS (using HTML tables) which I liked a lot. However, for me personally, I will probably stick with O'Reilly's CSS: The Definitive Guide.
I'm sure it was done for monetary reasons, but it would have been nice if the figures were in color - or at least the figures supporting the elements that deal with color. It was tough to distinguish between shades of grey or follow the arrows with the words "blue" or "green" on one end pointing to an area. I know, I know, picky picky. :) So - while I'm being picky... :) The foreward mentions "...compiling hundreds of CSS recipes into this single book" - but by my count, there are only 89 Problem/Solution/Discussion sections (aka recipes). I would like to have seen "hundreds of CSS recipes", which would have provided greater variety to the solutions.
Rating:  - Must have for CSS developers
This book can save you a lot of pain in developing CSS on multiple browsers. There is a lot of detail in the recipes on where the browser rendering quirks are and how to create CSS that works on all browsers.
That being said, this is not a book for CSS or HTML beginners. You need to understand the basic mechanics of the syntax and preferably have some experience with CSS before you pick this book up. This is a book for those that have worked with CSS and been stung either by browser incompatibilities or the inability to find the right CSS syntax for tricky jobs. Non-Javascript menus, the box model hack, three column CSS layouts, hanging list indents, it's all in here.
The great part about the cookbook series is that it not only shows you how to fix the problem in front of you, it also has enough discussion to get you around related issues and maybe teach you a thing or to.
I highly recommend this book to any serious CSS user.
|
