As the industry standard method for enriching the presentation of HTML-based web pages, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow you to give web pages more structure and a more sophisticated look. But first, you have to get past CSS theory and resolve real-world problems.

For those all-too-common dilemmas that crop up with each project, CSS Cookbook provides hundreds of practical examples with CSS code recipes that you can use immediately to format your web pages. Arranged in a quick-lookup format for easy reference, the second edition has been updated to explain the unique behavior of the latest browsers: Microsoft's IE 7 and Mozilla's Firefox 1.5. Also, the book has been expanded to cover the interaction of CSS and images and now includes more recipes for beginning CSS users. The explanation that accompanies each recipe enables you to customize the formatting for your specific needs. With topics that range from basic web typography and page layout to techniques for formatting lists, forms, and tables, this book is a must-have companion, regardless of your experience with Cascading Style Sheets.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 29 Ratings

How can a 2nd edition still have so many errors?! - 2007-08-02
Reviewer Rating:
In the past I've had confidence in the quality of books published by O'Reilly, but this book was a huge disappointment. There are so many errors--both typos and grammatical errors--coupled with awkward writing, that I find it almost unreadable. Even the diagram for the box model on page 67 is messed up. How is it possible that this sloppiness could get published (again!) in a second edition? There may be some valuable information in the book, but with all the mistakes I don't trust it as a resource. Look for authors Eric Meyers, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Andy Clarke for better CSS books.

CSS Seconds - 2007-03-20
Reviewer Rating:
The CSS Cookbook is written for those starting out with CSS and advanced users. It is not written as a tutorial in order to learn CSS but anyone with a basic grip on CSS will find the book a valuable companion. The clear explanations of many of the pitfalls we come across when writing CSS are simply stated in an easy to look up format.
Even though you may not want to read the book front to cover I think its a great experience to just pick your chapters by what interests you most and to work through a complete chapter following along and rewriting the code as indicated in order to get a good feel of what problems are solved so that if along the way you run in to a problem you find it back without mach ado. You might learn things you never knew where that simple ore useful. For those who are transitioning from table based layouts to CSS it might not be to book to get familiar with CSS because it is a technical book, a little to dry for just getting into using CSS. Once you have gone through the initial learning curve using books like Head First: HTML and CSS from O'Reilly or Eric Meyers on CSS from New Riders you will be ready to use the book as it is intended: A constant companion within reach whenever the going gets tough,
Chapter 9 on page layout for example clearly explains what took me a long time to understand when starting out trying to use floats for layout. A common problem like columns floated to the left being shorter then the second column located on the right and the resulting overflow of this right column below the left -floated column, I almost forgot that that took me hours to solve when starting out with CSS. In "CSS Cookbook" these behaviors/problems are explained almost in order of appearance as we are working to accomplice more complicated layouts using relative or absolute positioning. There are many resources out on the web but wadding through them is time consuming and being able to find your solutions in a one or two page example including code and images are a big time saver. After each problem there is almost always a "See Also" referral to either another recipe in the book or a link to a more detailed explanation online directing you not only to reliable CSS resources but also to the direct location of the particular problem at hand within these CSS online community resources.
In the same chapter on layout Christopher Schmitt takes us trough as step-by-step tutorial on Alex Robinson's influential article on creating the "any order Columns" published at postitioniseverything.com. A great exercise in understanding floats and how to be creative with code.
In chapter 4 on page elements you will find a great example on some creative ways to add java in your pages and I really appreciate the precise instructions here since that is still kind of new to me. The results are truly beautiful, and would inspire any visual designer and can even be applied to background images placed from a style sheet as you can see applied at [...] a small testing / playground of mine.

A whole chapter is dedicated to forms, another to print.
You will find a clear explanation of how to run multiple versions of i.e. and how to install them. I always new where to find them, just could not get them to work until now! I wish the same simple explanation were given on how to implement Shaun Inmans "clearing a float" in a absolute positioned design since it still is not working for me. (patience, patience...)

The books focus is on solving CSS problems so don't expect all files/example that accompany the book to be validating. I find that a bit of a draw back since the document type used is XHTML Strict in most example files. I think the book as well as the accompanying files may need someone to go through them one more time with a fine comb to correct some of the minor coding errors.
It's really not to be picking but the book is meant for those familiar with code looking to switch over to CSS and for those more advanced. Using a XTML strict Doc declaration in most documents, would it not be neater if the document where written and validated as such? Text without a paragraph surrounding it or a

A helpful companion book, with a few flaws - 2007-06-07
Reviewer Rating:
In general, this is a helpful book if you need to research a particular design solution, but it should in no way be used exclusively to learn CSS. It's helpful to have CSS and javascript experience to fully take advantage of everything this book offers.

Unfortunately, the book contains some organizational flaws. The "General" chapter, which is meant to serve as an introduction to CSS, is a brief background to concepts and tools, but it doesn't always point out that certain selectors are not supported in every browser (child selectors and pseudo-elements are the most notable). I think it'd be helpful to state straight-up that many aspects of CSS are interpreted differently in various browsers, if supported at all, and then note which browsers support each feature as the feature is introduced to the reader. To their credit, they do include a "pitfalls/warnings" icon at the end of some sections, but it'd be helpful to know about them before you continue on to work through one of their examples, only to discover later that it doesn't work in IE6. Since most people would like to design for a cross-browser experience, they might just want to skip over certain CSS features that are not widely supported, so indicating browser support up-front would be very helpful. And I wonder how valuable it is to mention something like "text-shadow" if it is only currently supported by one browser? In addition, some important concepts are buried in the book (such as the fundamental concept of inheritance and the !important rule) - they might be better placed in the "General" chapter (introduction).

Though this book does have its flaws, I have to say that it does assemble some nice formatting tricks. I have previously scoured the Web searching for many of the techniques that are all nicely packaged in one place in the "Images" chapter, so I am sure this would be a real time-saver for many, as the leg-work is already done for you. Among some commonly sought out techniques are rounded corners, dropshadows, and the lightbox effect. The "Lists" and "Navigation" chapters are also pretty useful. The "recipes" this book includes are not only a means to accomplish a particular goal, but the solutions are creatively achieved so that you start thinking about using CSS in less out-of-the-box ways. And kudos to them for mentioning accessibility/usability in the "Typography" chapter - those concepts often fall to the wayside in comparison to glitzier topics.

Too many errors - 2008-09-15
Reviewer Rating:
Unfortunately, this book has too many errors, right from the very first chapter. It's unacceptable to have sample code that does not even match the description of the accompanying text, and output pictures that show something different than what the code actually does (ie: text is supposed to be displayed underlined in bold, and shows normal, when the point of the example is how to do that).

I'm returning it until they get a new corrected edition. It just pointless to spend time figuring out what the author really meant, I'd rather spend that time learning from another source.

cook - 2009-03-02
Reviewer Rating:
The book came quickly. It has many code examples of specific styling issues. I just wish it was a huge book, with many more examples!

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