Why I want to consume "Cascading Stylesheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference" — 2 years ago
Although written way back in 2001, it covers CSS 2.0 – not the older CSS 1 standard.
Though CSS 2.1 has changed things slightly, it is still mostly the same properties and you can find short documents elsewhere that list the deltas (curt lists of technical differences) between CSS 2.0 and CSS 2.1.
The author is Eric A. Meyer. If anyone is familiar with CSS - both its spec and its real-world behavior – that person is Eric Meyer. He is also a very good writer, both in terms of his prose and his choices of examples.
The book is organized in such a way it can be used as both a reference and as a user guide. He covers things in a useful order. Later, when you want to go back and find things – you can.
It is not written in a tutorial fashion, however. If you want something like that, then I suggest you get another book to go along with this one – or else find a nice one on the web.
There is good coverage at the beginning of the book on:
- import rules
- cascading rules
- conflict resolution
- layout rules
- box model
- positioning rules
- font rules
Though CSS seems like a simple means of associating named property values with HTML/XHTML elements – and it is – there are a lot of rules that regulate how these values affect the way things wind up looking on the page.
Thankfully, he covers that up front. Then, he presents all the properties in later chapters.
There are quick reference tables at the end, and there is also a very good index as well. The book is 334 pages long, making it about 3/4 of an inch thick. Page size is a little bigger than standard paperback novel size and well under textbook sized pages. It’s easy to carry around and flip through really fast.
