Web site design has grown up. Unlike the old days, when designers cobbled together chunky HTML, bandwidth-hogging graphics, and a prayer to make their sites look good, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) now lets your inner designer come out and play. But CSS isn't just a tool to pretty up your site; it's a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentation--from fonts and colors to page layout. CSS: The Missing Manual clearly explains this powerful design language and how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.

Like their counterparts in print page-layout programs, style sheets allow designers to apply typographic styles, graphic enhancements, and precise layout instructions to elements on a Web page. Unfortunately, due to CSS's complexity and the many challenges of building pages that work in all Web browsers, most Web authors treat CSS as a kind of window-dressing to spruce up the appearance of their sites. Integrating CSS with a site's underlying HTML is hard work, and often frustratingly complicated. As a result many of the most powerful features of CSS are left untapped. With this book, beginners and Web-building veterans alike can learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of CSS and take complete control over their Web pages' appearance.

Author David McFarland (the bestselling author of O'Reilly's Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual) combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You'll learn how to:

• Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS

• Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders

• Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages

• Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows

• Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML

• Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your Web pages work consistently from browser to browser

• Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don't require using old techniques like HTML tables

• Style Web pages for printing

Unlike competing books, this Missing Manual doesn't assume that everyone in the world only surfs the Web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer; our book provides support for all major Web browsers and is one of the first books to thoroughly document the newly expanded CSS support in IE7, currently in beta release.

Want to learn how to turn humdrum Web sites into destinations that will capture viewers and keep them longer? Pick up CSS: The Missing Manual and learn the real magic of this tool.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 102 Ratings

The best book on CSS I own - 2009-10-26
Reviewer Rating:
This wonderful, supurb book, "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition", has set the bar high for the standard of excellence as regards teaching CSS. I started trying to learn CSS a long time ago but due to the poor quality of the books on the subject, I never "got it". Tragically, I first tried to learn css from the ridiculously terse and totally incomprehensible book, "CSS Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))". I next erred on the other extreme by purchasing the insanely meandering, needlessly padded, and pointlessly "funny" book, "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML"

I really cannot say enough good things about "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition". The author is so distinguished it's unbelievable. Not only can he really, really teach well-- in addition he really, really knows CSS inside and out.

At the end of each chapter he has a tutorial. After downloading all the code from the book's website, I do the tutorials using FireFox with the "FireBug" add-on enabled. "FireBug" is fantastic as a learning tool. It lets you easily change CSS operands and instantly see the effect. Another great FireFox plugin is "ColorZilla"-- it's "eyedropper" shows the RGB values of colors on the web page when you hover or click on a color. It's very validating to see "ColorZilla" display the exact same RGB color value that you can see via "FireBug" is the color setting for that element. Another useful plugin is "CodeBurner for Firebug" because it extends "FireBug" with reference material for CSS and HTML. Also, I find it very helpful to look at the source code of the book's downloaded tutorials via "jEdit", a free text editor which the book recommends. "jEdit" does a fantastic job of showing html and CSS in color, which makes it much easier to comprehend the CSS while doing the book's tutorials. The only shortcoming of "jEdit" is that it is a little clumsy to switch between edit windows. So, I use a 2nd text editor called "NotePad++" to show the "after version of the tutorial", and use "jEdit" to show the "before version of the tutorial". That way I can easily copy/paste the source code snippets as I go through the tutorial.

Thanks to this great book, "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition", I finally at long last, feel confident of my CSS skills.

Excellent CSS Reference: Balances Definitions with Technique - 2009-10-25
Reviewer Rating:
There are many good CSS books out there but what really sets the great ones apart are things like organization, clarity and the quality and simplicity of the how-to examples. I've read through dozens of technical how-to books, on topics ranging from CSS to Photoshop and Motion Graphics, but web technologies are often the most difficult to convey and explain succinctly and in context.

Everything is very abstract in the world of web code; it's no small task to write a truly excellent reference book that keeps you engaged and informed as a reader, rather than bombarding you with white-paper speak or endless, overly complex examples. This book succeeds on all of the counts noted earlier. It's very easy to find exactly the types of CSS elements you need to learn about, and then quickly discover how they work. The time between reading and implementing is short. The examples are very clearly illustrated and the author's style and ability to explain things in the right order and with the right amount of detail, make this book a must-have CSS reference. Example: it took me all of 10 minutes to discover (again) how to build my own navbar elements with this book, including styling and page flow considerations. With previous books -even good ones- I'd often sit there scratching my head, turning pages back and forth for a half hour before similarly complicated topics made sense.

I've probably read through a dozen popular CSS titles. I own three. One from Eric Meyer (the classic O'Reilly title - what else?), a copy of "CSS: Separating Content from Presentation" and now this book. This will be my go-to reference anytime I've forgotten a specific technique or guideline. As someone who works in the digital arts, I often go several months between code updates for my site and so having a truly comprehensive but efficient reference is a must to shake out the cobwebs. This is that book. Enjoy.

not bad, but may be difficult to follow - 2009-11-09
Reviewer Rating:
this book has some good in dept details of the function of css and the tags that may be used. but if youre unfamiliar with syntax and general knowledge of page layout, it might be difficult to understand what the writer is referring to. and it lacks graphic representation of each example they refer to. there is free content that you can download online that is mentioned at the end of the book. might be worth looking at if youre familiar with other forms of coding and want to go into a more graphic approach to building web pages.

Not an accessible reference book - 2009-11-08
Reviewer Rating:
A lot of people love this book, so obviously it speaks to them. For me, his code examples were abbreviated and lacking context -- and therefore lacked usefulness. I was looking for a reference book, and as such this book did not provide me with complete *functional* code examples that would allow me to skim and pick what I needed when I'm in a rush (i.e. working).

Excellent resource - 2009-11-07
Reviewer Rating:
I recently purchased this book and it has proved to be an invaluable resource to working with CSS in my project. The only thing I haven't found are some code examples... it would be nice to have sample pages illustrating some key concepts.

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