The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)

• #17 in Best Cascading Style Sheets Books

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Bought the book, looked good and was hoping to find more information about CSS. The book is mostly about design. It has beautifull pictures of different designs for one website. If you're looking for inspiration on how to design your site, this book could help you. If you're looking how to use CSS, buy another book.
The book doesn't clearly show you how to make the sites, the lessons of this book are not useless but could be told in a book of 30 pages instead of 296.
If you really want to know how to use CSS buy Eric Meyer's books.

If you've already picked up the basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and want to see what is *really* possible, check out The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag (New Riders). This is a unique book...

Chapter List: View Source; Design; Layout; Imagery; Typography; Special Effects; Reconstruction; Closing Thoughts; Index

This book covers the topic of CSS in an unusual fashion. Dave Shea came up with the idea for a web site called csszengarden.com. The basic premise is to have a standard HTML file, complete with class and id tags that can not be changed. The goal is to then use a CSS style sheet to apply unique styles and graphics to the page, resulting in some stunning visual displays of web design. But the basic thing to remember is that the page content doesn't change, just the CSS design file that's applied to it.

Shea and Holzschlag take some of the more unique designs that have been submitted and use them to explain various CSS concepts and techniques that can be used to push your design efforts beyond the ordinary. The techniques are very well documented, as well as giving explanations on what will and will not work in the major browsers due to differences in CSS rendering. Since so much of the design is driven by choices in graphics and typeface, you'll also be exposed to quite a bit in the way of design concepts, how to choose and render text, different graphic formats, and so on. While none of the information would be considered a complete reference work on any given subject, you do have enough information to apply the technique and continue on from there if necessary.

In addition to being a book to teach technique, it also does a wonderful job in providing inspiration. If you're looking for ideas to create a site that stands out, a leisurely perusal of the pages (or of the website) will offer up endless ways to reach that goal. "You can do that?" will be a phrase that escapes from your lips on a number of occasions.

Beautiful, instructional, and inspirational... This should probably be the second or third CSS book you buy once you buy a tutorial and/or a reference guide. A recommended read...

What most of the negative reviewers of this title seem to not realize is that this is not a "HOW TO" book. If you want a book to learn CSS, there are plenty of better choices. This is a case study book of one web site, the process from beginning to end. This is a designer's notebook on a project.

This is important to understand: this is not a book that will teach you the fundamentals of CSS. Repeat, NOT a primer on CSS. Rather, it is a book aimed at users who want to write or improve the aesthetics of their website by incorporating CSS. For that reason, it is fairly solid. Most of the premises are fairly basic and straightforward, covering the usual elements of type, layout, images, grids, etc. It is a decent resource for ideas and perhaps some alternative ways to approach building or rebuilding your site (using CSS presumably). Advanced designers would probably want to look elsewhere for ideas, theories and techniques.

If you want to understand what CSS is really about, in terms of writing it (to make your site as pretty as the examples in this book) you should turn elsewhere, like Eric A. Meyer's book on the subject. And you can easily check out the publisher's website and probably see everything you need to that is in this book.

As a big fan of the web site (...) I was very excited to hear that a book concerning the web site was going to be released. This excitement was quickly stifled upon reading the books...because, frankly, the book is horrible. The discussion of how to actually create such beautiful designs using advanced CSS techniques (and hacks) is pretty much non-existent from the book. Instead, the book focuses on general design principles...principles covered in MANY other books. This fact, essentially makes this book worthless. In the end, it has VERY LITTLE to do with CSS design, making the title deceiving and the book as a whole, quite disappointing.

My recommendation: (...) If you want a book on web site design principles, there are much better titles out there as well.

Too bad though...this *could* have been a GREAT book...

This book should probably be called A Portfolio of CSS Design. It contains lots of nice pages showing examples of some lovely CSS design. However, it doesn't present enough constructive information to really help you. Tell me exactly how the page put to together rather than some obscure problem which the average CSS user is unlikely to encounter. I don't know who this book is aimed at. There's not enough in it for it to be a tutorial book and while it's nice to look at, is this any better than viewing the actual web pages on the Internet?

After being introduced to the CSS Zen Garden through a web dev magazine, I was riveted by the concept as well as the practices involved. As soon as I read that there was to be a "companion book", it immediately shot to the top of my list of must-haves.

This book is the perfect complement to the CSS Zen Garden web site in every regard. The goals of the book follow those of the site to the letter. It discusses a set of philosophies in visual design as well as web programming. Within the pages lie sources of inspiration for designers stuck in a rut or coders desperate for a workaround or solution. The language of the content is non-technical, conversational, and even friendly.

The book has no illusions of being perfect; the shortcomings of the content (as well as the site) are referenced constantly.

CSS experts will probably not find anything new here in the way of hacks and tools. Likewise, graphic designers will not discover any previously unknown rules or schemes. What this book does provide that is new is a way of thinking.

In 7 years of professional web design, I've picked up my share of bad habits. Deadlines and budget constraints force me to wear both the designer and programmer hats, as well as perform some pretty bad design tricks to get the job done. This book is ideal for someone in my position. It gets me back on track towards better, standards-based programming. It also shows me how to properly mesh design and code.

I've been using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for a little over a year on my personal website. Like many CSS beginners, my original site design was boxy and unappealing. Unhappy with the way my site looked, I soon stumbled upon the "CSS Zen Garden" website which showcased professional CSS web design. I was blown away by the possibilities, but I had difficulty bridging the gap between what I saw on screen and my reference-like CSS books. In that respect, this book, "The Zen of CSS Design," is a dream come true. It's the first and only book I've read that combines graphic arts know-how with CSS layouts. Written in plain english, the book deconstructs and analyzes the best designs from the most inspirational CSS website on the internet. In short, the book exists to make beautiful CSS designs possible.

While the book focuses on graphic design for beginners and up, a working knowledge of CSS and probably Photoshop is required before you can really get into the book. The text is not a tutorial in the mechanics of CSS, and frankly, thank goodness. Those subjects have been written to death in a number of other books, and their inclusion would have made this book a drag to read. No, "the Zen of CSS Design" is lean and straight to the point. I finished it over a single weekend, and I immediately started work on a comprehensive site redesign. It's the best book Iv've bought this year, and I whole-heartedly recommend it.

(...)

The Zen of CSS Design is divided into seven chapters. The first is a brief but informed review of the development of web standards, leading to the idea of the Zen Garden site. The book then moves into Laying the Foundation, an outline of the Zen Garden HTML source. There are some honest critiques of Shea's own HTML, proving that even the best can find ways to improve. This section is valuable in itself to understanding that a good CSS page starts with solid HTML, a point that is often lost on new designers.

The next five chapters cover design, layout, imagery, typography, and special effects. Each chapter takes six submissions to Zen Garden and analyzes the techniques each designer used to create the styles, in the process expounding on different web design issues. The commentaries vary in detail. The review of Night Drive (#064) was particularly informative as a step by step analysis, and that makes sense as it is one of author Dave Shea's contribution. Other reviews are more general, but for most of us, they are all are more instructional than just reviewing the source would be.

Throughout the book the authors give their insights into issues that challenge web designers all the time, such as font sizing (they suggest that three methods are reliable, each with pros and cons), web-safe colors (generally not important any more) and fixed versus elastic design (your call, but they give you some good advice). An unexpected bonus is a section on Photoshop techniques that Dave Shea used in Coastal Breeze (#013).

Most important for getting to this level of web design are image replacement techniques, and the authors give a nice rundown of the current methods. I knew about this idea and had actually wondered how to do it. This book is a very good starting point.

The final chapter is called Reconstruction. Again, it uses six sites as examples, but this time goes step by step through the development of the style sheets. It can be difficult to see how effects were created just by looking at the source, and this section shows how the code was brought along from start to finish. The individual images used by each designer are shown by themselves so that readers can see the raw graphic material that was then incorporated into the design. This touch is particularly helpful, and the chapter gives a good picture of how image replacement techniques work.

There are insights that one might not pick up from just looking through the Zen Garden website. I did not realize, for instance, that some of the submissions render differently in different browsers, usually as a result of designers having to deal with the peculiarities of Internet Explorer. It was remarkable to discover that Egor Kloos' Gemination site (#062) has two completely different renderings. Open it in Firefox and then in Explorer to see the difference. Easier yet, open it in Netscape 8 and use that browser's dual-engine design to switch between IE and Mozilla. One style sheet, two different pages!

One of the best things about this book is in fact the attention to cross-browser design. The inconsistency of current CSS support can be daunting, but it helps to know that even high-level designers are struggling with the problem. And it's great that this community is willing to share its solutions, giving the rest of us an idea of the possibilities that exist within the limitations we have to deal with.

Throughout the book, there is sidebar material that is a veritable encyclopedia of CSS resources on the web. One could just run through the sidebars and get an excellent education. The Closing Thoughts section is another valuable resource, with additional web references plus a nice "Crib Sheet" of solutions to common problems. And the index got me right to topics when I wanted to go back and check them again.

A comment should be made on the book itself. As befits a design book, this one is beautifully done. The graphics are nicely reproduced, and the type and page arrangement are attractive as well as effective. If there is such a thing as a coffee table book for computer jocks, this is it.

Some details on some sites might be too small to be seen well in the book. In those cases, the site needs to be pulled up. Probably the best way to use this book is to do just that--prop it next to a computer and open each site as you go along.

This book is not for CSS beginners. My own choice is Callihan, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) By Example (Que 2002). And despite its broad coverage, The Zen of CSS Design is not a general CSS reference. Meyer, Cascading Style Sheets, The Definitive Guide, 2d Edition (O'Reilly 2004) is probably the classic in that regard. But just as the CSS Zen Garden site is unique and belongs in every list of bookmarks, The Zen of CSS Design is itself unique and belongs on every web designer's bookshelf.

I'm so sad, this writers brought all their friends to praise them and mark them 5 stars, but it worth less then 2

i consider myself as an advanced css builder who wants to progress in the field of css
i wanted to learn about new techniques, new hacks and all about layouts and id's

i was disappointed!

you know those books that the writer just pure his text into his notepad and expand the size of the pages by lots of unnecessary information? with dozens of pictures and lot of repeated words ? here we have these case

i spent 25$ more then i needed to spent, they told me that this book is for advanced users, but its only for how-to-decorate-a-book wish to become artists

i gave this book 2 stars just because it covers areas that novice will need to know, and it will guide me in the future if ill need to design a book by myself


hoped i helped one poor soul :)

In recent years the design of web pages has changed from using HTML with tables to handle the major part of formatting to using Cascading Style Sheets.

This book is aimed at the web designer or programmer who is interested in what CSS can bring to the design of sites. To the advanced CSS user this book presents a visual focus combined with practical CSS examples from some of today's most innovaive and creative designers. The most advanced user will come away with new ideas that can be used on the next site.

The book recommends that the CSS Novice get a companion book that covers the syntax and basic concepts and to use this book to expand on those ideas and apply them to their work.

With this exception, this is indeed a book suitable for beginners, if nothing else to see just where it is they can go.

This book is about extraordinary web page design. Thirty-six designs are featured from the web site Zen Garden: The Beauty of CSS Design [...], which was created by one of the authors, David Shea. The Zen Garden web site is really a great concept. Start with a simple, well-formed HTML document, coded for maximum flexibility in applying a style sheet, and then invite designers to submit a CSS document with image files to "style" that basic HTML web page. The challenge is to explore the possibilities and push the limits.

The book focuses on fundamental design concepts such as typography, color and layout. This is not a typical step-by-step book, which often has really ugly visual examples of what the code will do. Shea and Holzschlag look at CSS-formatted pages through a different lens. Each showcased project is introduced with an explanation of the design principles examined, followed by a breakdown of the elements and how they were formatted with CSS. Snippets of code are included, and you can go to the web site and download both the HTML and the CSS for that particular page if you want to follow along.

At first glance this is a visually rich book, but the screen shots are unfortunately small (they were created at 72 dpi after all) and some of the details are noticeably pixilated. Some include an expanded view of the web page, something you'll never see through the browser window, but helpful for seeing how it all fits together. Another thing I found useful was the view of all of the images used on the webpage, spread apart so I can get a good look at them. I may be stating the obvious, but what makes these designs so exceptional is the use of images. And to really appreciate the designs you need to look at them in the intended presentation-on screen. Also online is the complete style sheet for every page-you can deconstruct to your heart's content.

The authors state that the book was written for anyone with an interest in designing and developing web sites, from novice to advanced users, designers and programmers. I would argue that you have to have a pretty good grasp of CSS for most of the explanations to make sense. I'm a graphic designer struggling to learn CSS. I've given up font tags and rollover images for CSS formatting and text-based rollover effects for links, but I still use tables. I haven't yet grasped using CSS for positioning elements on the page. What I was hoping to find in this book were simple, straightforward, engaging CSS-formatted web pages. Unfortunately this wasn't the case. The featured layouts relied on a number of hacks and workarounds to get the pages to appear as intended. Is this a reflection on the state of browser compliance to web standards? For folks who enjoy the challenge of finding unique coding solutions there are plenty of clever examples in this book. However, it is definitely not a reference book. It's even hard to find anything specific through the index.

Is there any long-term value to this book? Or is it like so many other computer books that become outdated after a few years, sometimes as quickly as when a new version of software is released? The Zen of CSS Design may serve as a snapshot of the early days of CSS design and an inspiration for today.

This book might be a good choice for graphic designers. I bought the book as an aid in working out tough problems we may encounter in converting a large corporate web site to use Web Standards techniques. It's useless for that purpose.

There were only 2 chapters that dealt with actual HTML and CSS, the rest is about graphic design. But what's worse, I thought it was extremely poorly edited.

For example, on p. 87 the book text says:
"the HTML below results in the linear layout of the elements, one after the other, shown in Figure 1"

they show this code:
< h1>This is a header< /h1>
< p>This is some text< /p>
< p>and even more text< /p>

Figure 1 looks like this:

The Road to Enlightenment
Littering a dark and dreary road lay the past relics of browser specific tags, incompatible DOMs, and broken CSS support

*Obviously* the code and the figure have NOTHING to do with one another.

Examples like this illustrate how useless this book is for actually learning to use CSS to do page layout. If you don't already know how to do it, reading this book will merely convince you that you'll never figure it out.

Wow! It's easily my favorite CSS book. I honestly think this is a must-have. Why? It's the only one that breaks away from the focus on CSS as architecture. The importance of graphical design finally gets some justice, let alone mention. It also has the most concise, simple explanations of CSS concepts I've seen anywhere.

This is the second half of CSS that we've been missing. The visual potential means as much if not more than the structural potential. The casual web viewer can see this instantly. And they love it. Anyone remember the paradigm shift from DOS to Windows? This book shows the paradigm shift from table design to CSS design that is inevitable.

You can find lots of dry material on the web, and in books, about the mechanics of CSS. The CSSZenGarden website was intended as a breakout site to make CSS design exciting, colorful, and inspirational. This book does the same thing - breakout.

It's the first CSS book to demonstrate the mechanics of making and designing graphical pieces in conjunction with CSS. You can't look at this book and credibly defend table designs. It's absolutely embarrassing. The book is visually stunning throughout. The explanations are revealing and to-the-point.

I also recommend having another CSS book as a technical companion (I like Eric Meyer). Whatever you do, please don't even waste your time with learning to style tables! Seriously. The point is CSS design. This book will keep you on the right CSS path, and keep it fun.

The three biggest reasons people avoid using CSS are 1) positioning and design-view problems, 2) browser hacks, and 3) they're graphically challenged. This book takes those issues head-on, and in a way that is elegant and simple.

This book is really intended as a design-focused CSS book. On that count, it is wildly successful. The samples are many and useful. I'm a programmer, so I am used to technical text. For everyone else, this is likely the most important CSS book you could get anywhere.

As someone who came to CSS only a year ago, I fully endorse the enthusiastic response this book has received from the other reviewers here. It is not a beginner's book (though at times it is a surprising mixture of the advanced and the elementary) but a superb overview for someone who has a thorough grounding in the basics (best served by Teague's 'DHTML and CSS' and Briggs' 'Cascading Style Sheets'). This is right up there with the superlative 'Eric Meyer on CSS' - which obviously influenced it in many ways, and was just like having a complete expert at your elbow while working through his tutorials - and the wonderfully clear and concise 'Web Standards Solutions' by Cederholm (which all all CSS designers should own).

But overall this is the best yet, not least because it is so beautifully produced and inspirational, concerned always with the aesthetics of design rather than pure technicalities, but handling both in an extremely well controlled and ordered way.

[...] I already knew this would be a design book and not a CSS guide.

The problem is that both the book and the site are misleading. These are essentially home pages by graphic designers. However as a practical matter, none of these designs would work site-wide - rather the point of a style sheet, after all. There's simply not enough screen 'real estate' to accommodate content in subsequent pages. In addition, the designs are such that tooling them to 'brand' across sub-pages sitewide would be very difficult, and the book provides no examples, guidelines, or suggestions for doing so.

For inspiration, to see what you can do with color and layout, and for finding your own unique vision, this book may be useful. For designing sites of more than one page, however, this book falls short.

The book is just as beautiful as any zen garden site. There are clear notes and great screenshots on the side lines. Most importantly, the book is beautifully written. The authors walk you through the graphic design process and highlight css methods for each design. The book is not a CSS reference or a book for dummies. It is a series of case studies that reference best practices. After working with CSS layout and design for several months and reading a few good CSS books (especially Dan Cederholm's Web Standards Solutions), The Zen of CSS Design now sits on the top of my book pile. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about CSS, this book will teach you a thing or two about design. I don't know Dave Shea personally, but I hope he is well rewarded for providing this great forum for good designers to showcase their talents and for sharing what he has learned along the way.

Beginners might find this book too abstract. My advice is to buy the book anyway and come back to it once you've knocked your head against your first few layouts.

I've been reading (and reviewing) mostly business books lately. I picked up The Zen of CSS design because it was pretty and because I design my own business web sites. Mostly because it was pretty.

Having read about the CSS Zen Garden and seen the sites in The Zen of CSS Design, it would be more fitting to say I build my own web sites. Where I use a cold chisel and a sledgehammer, these guys use a feather and a dab of India ink and create multi-colored, multi-faceted sites. Okay, they don't literally use a feather and ink, but I don't literally use a cold chisel, either.

If, as a business person, you design your own web sites or want to, take a look at The Zen of CSS Design.

If, on the other hand, you love to look at great sites but have no interest in creating them, look at it in the bookstore or check it out of the library. It's a beautiful book.

The Zen of CSS Design is a designer's book, not a programmer's book. You do need a basic understanding of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but there are scads of good books on CSS and you can read one concurrently with Zen and learn as you go.

If you are at all interested in creating attractive, standards-based web sites, you will learn more from this book than any other single volume I've looked at. Granted, as I said it doesn't cover the very basic, beginning stuff, but it goes one better. It shows CSS in action, doing really amazing things.

The whole book is based on one web site. The HTML code is exactly the same on every rendition of the site. The actual sites couldn't be more different, and it's all done with CSS. It's truly remarkable.

I'm taking up the challenge and starting my own attempt at the site. I'm sure it will never be good enough to submit to the CSS Zen Garden, but it's a fun project (like I needed another one) and a good learning experience. By the time I finish or give up, I'll know more about CSS than I can imagine now.

This is a great design book and a great coffee table book, in one. Check it out if you're into web design at all, even if you think you're not into CSS. You might change your mind.

Like the review below, this book spends most of it's time talking about design, and really, it reads just like an art history book 101 ... So if you like reading art history books, then great! The examples that they choose are great, but they don't go into detail about how the artists actually created the site using CSS. This book, might inspire you, but I don't think it help you design sites like the ones in this book using CSS, because there is just too much fluff and not enough content. I recommend you save your money, and instead, look at the css code on the beautifule csszengarden site. I found that 10 times more useful.

So, i know a little about CSS, i want to get better, i get this book.

Unlike what i expected, this book is more about design than about CSS. You'll find a few pieces of valuable information on CSS, but i know they're holding back a lot of knowledge here. It could go much deeper, and i think it should. Everytime it starts getting interesting it says: to find out more about this please visit the website at http://www.soando...
I don't want to read all this on screen. I hate reading on screen. That's why i got this book after all. And i don't want to have to turn on the computer everytime i want to know more.

Now, books on design in general are a good thing too. But unfortunately i feel that this book doesn't do a good job here.

I just a pretty book
Is not a CSS book at all
lot's of pretty sites maybe
not for the begginer or advanced css builder
I gave this book 1 star, in the future I wont buy anything from the same authors.
All the good reviews are untrue false big lies!

As someone completely self-taught in all things web-development, I've enjoyed immensely reading Shea's book. It skips over most of the stuff you can pick up on forums and mailing lists and really jumps into the less celebrated topics of typography, colour balance, contrast, and layout.

It's not a CSS book at all. In fact, I find it to be more of a general design-tips guide, although there are occasional discussions on browser support for various different tricks and methods. Don't count on this as a reference until you've read it all through once. The information is organised by entry, rather than by technical topic.

It's also very practical. No diatribes, here, on the ills of this or that practice. (Semantics evangelists, I'm looking at you) A beautiful layout is presented, and then various techniques are shown for achieving such a result, at the design stage, at the graphical stage, at the technical stage, and at the presentation (CSS) stage.

If you're looking to learn CSS, hit up Eric Meyer's books or just hang out on the webdeveloper.com forums. But if you already know lots of it and want some inspiration and advanced tips, pick up this book.

I agree with a previous reviewer who noted that this book is not for beginners.

However, this is a book that I have been waiting for. I teach CSS and XHTML strict to students through The Florida Virtual School. Students will not understand the book until they get to the later modules in the course, but what a great companion book to their study of the awesome use of CSS that demonstrates how the design can be treated separately from the structure of the web page. For quite some time, I have encouraged students to go to the CSS Zen Garden site as a living, breathing example of the visual flexibility available through using well-formed web pages and CSS.

I have admired Molly Holzschlag for years and with David Shea together it simply had to be great.

Thanks you, David and Molly for all your work and an outstanding book.

Good book. My only recommendation for the authors would be to NOT encourage CSS hacks within a CSS document as this can only lead to future trouble. I would recommend using IE conditional statements as a method to point IE hacks to a different style sheet that can be easily altered when IE someday gets something right. In fact IE 7 beta version fixes a lot of these issues addressed in the book.

The idea of the Zen Garden is genius. I recommend the book only to those who want inspiration and to learn the history of the CSS Zen Garden. NOT to those wanting to learn much about CSS. You can learn more by just viewing the designs and downloading the CSS from ZEN Gardens site. It is allowed.

-MAK

This book doesn't dissect CSS in the way that I expected, but it's still a great book. I'll be visiting the csszengarden website to break it apart myself, which is probably the best way to learn anyway.

Pros: inspiring designs, good CSS hacks, tells you what works in which browser (basically IE sucks, but you knew that already)

Cons: need more detail on how the text and images are pieced together to create the overall layouts, but at least there is the website to reference

Overall: It's good, I actually enjoyed it. But you will need another CSS book to go along with it - especially if you are new to CSS.

This is much more than an ordinary book. I hate reading programming or web books, yet I loved this book.

I am a web developer with a programming background, more interested in usability than looks. I had traditionally used CSS for fonts and that's all. Recently I started exploring the true power of CSS and becoming more interested in color and imagery.

Then I stumbled on the CSS Zen Garden book and web site. Together, they opened my eyes to web design as an art. It taught me principles of light, color, fonts, and layout with CSS. It helped me realize that I can have awesome web sites! I have gone on to learn Photoshop and explore my own eye for good design. Armed with new knowledge, I look forward to working on my own design for the Zen Garden.

Over the past year I've struggled with CSS and the cross platform/browser version problem. I nearly gave up hope before I came across Dave Shea's wonderful CSS Zen Garden site. While many of the site's offerings are advanced, I am pleased to say Dave and Molly's book is amazing. While The Zen of CSS Design is recommended for those with a grounding in CSS, the book is written is concise and clear enough for a beginner to understand. When you add the wonderful graphic and web design lore to the mix, you have a compelling and very inspiring book on web design.

The authors present the examples, workarounds and tips in a very well written and easy to understand manner. The tips scattered throughout the book feature links to online articles that further one's education in CSS.
As a beginner, this is the first book since Zeldman's Designing for Web Standards that I don't feel threatened by. I understand the concepts without scratching my head-or worse-shutting the book and my computer down in frustration.

The extra special joy of The Zen of CSS Design is the wonderful explainations of graphic design incorporated into every Zen variant the duo examine. As someone about to learn to design, I can't tell you how inspirational this book is. I can't wait to read it again and put some of the practices mentioned to work.

I would love to see more from Dave & Molly on this subject.

Highly, and I do mean highly recommended.

This book reads like the authors tricked the publishers into letting them write a book on CSS Design, when they really intended to write a book on design theory. That's cool and all, but I wanted a book on CSS Design. I already have better books on design theory.

The CSS examples were helpful, but sparse in the book. There was plenty of going on about typefaces to use, colors, and artwork, though.

All in all, it was only moderately helpful.

I have always admired Dave Shea's CSS work and the Zen Garden site but this book truly delivers. Beyond the incredible examples of CSS work by so many talented people, Dave and Molly have assembled a resource book for a wide audience. The layout of the book in terms of chapters, examples etc is outstanding. The examples of CSS code are short and to the point with easy to understand explanations. Prior to buying the book, I thought it might focus solely on the technical side of CSS. This isn't the case as one gets to read about why some of these designs/layouts work. This is one of those books that you read for 2 hrs, come back the next day and read again and again. It's not a 2 hr read and then sits on a shelf for the next year. My copy will get well used. Lastly, after designing commercial websites for over 15 years, and 2 years of accessible, web standards design, I can honestly say this book is in my top 3 books that I own and USE. Nice job Dave and Molly, I HIGHLY recommend this book to designers, css junkies. A MUST READ!

At the bookstore, I was seduced by the graphics and the concept of the book. The world really needs a book like this. The concept of incorporating css and graphic design as one creature is really pertinant.

However, the book was watered down and poorly organized. It takes designs from the website and discusses parts of them. I found this piecemeal approach really difficult to understand. A little code here, a little design there but never enough to provide a solid context.It also tried to cover too much ground, and as a result it didn't go into enough depth to be of any use.

This was a pretty expensive book (at the book store it was about $40), and I found it almost a complete waste of money. Buy something better, such as Styln' With CSS.

If you are a programmer that knows nothing about graphic design, this book is pretty nice. It is about 70% focused on how to do graphic design, and about %30 about CSS. Otherwise, if you want to learn CSS this isnt the best book.

Im a graphic designer first, CSS programmer second. There is a lot of fluff in this book, a lot of Graphic Design 101 concepts, so it could be a LOT shorter. The graphic design theory is interesting for a non-designer, but I read this book in 2 hours because I know all the graphic design stuff. The CSS code is buried in the fluff, and in the end I am referencing other books to get real CSS code fast. The glossy prettiness of this book bumps up the price, substance doesnt.

A number of "innovative" CSS code in this book is not cross-browser compliant, so as of 2006 it is pretty worthless. There are some hacks, but not enough. Since proper website design is always designed for legacy browsers, lowest common denominator, I dont think the innovative or CSS3 code is useful for another couple of years until the critical mass catches up. IE is the big offender, and if they can ever release a proper browser, maybe this book's code would be more applicable.

For now and near future, it's clear CSS wont replace DHTMl or Javascript even though the authors want to pretend it will (I want that too, but. . .)

Hello -

As a college web graphics, HTML, and CSS instructor with a history in graphic design, there is not greater book (especially combined with a careful review of the actual website the book is based upon) written on CSS that brings out its strength in design.

How ironic that the critics here are upset that it spends so much time on design. That's the point. Most web developers DO NOT study carefully the principles of graphic design and how to apply them, so they miss its power (not just Beauty... but the power to persuade, among other things).

I disagree that there is not enough CSS explanation in the book, though it is probably not the book for a total beginner. If you have written a bit of CSS code in your pages, AND what to learn what design is all about then you will understand it, and this is an invaluable book. Be sure to take the time to visit the CSSZenGarden.com site and chew on the concepts with the real examples.

This book is an analisys from a designer's point of view of the cssZenGarden.com project, which is a beautiful project on itself.

The title can be a little deceiving for people looking for CSS references, because that is something this book certainly isn't.

This book is about web design, each chapter covering a different subject, such as Typography, Images, and so on. CSS covered as a tool to achieve the results inteded by the design.

This book is very inspiring and you can in fact learn a lot about CSS usage, hacks and web desing implementation process.

This neither a book for a first contact with CSS nor a coder's book, but is a fantastic book for someone looking for web design.

As the web developer in our company I often hear our graphical designers asking me what IS possible with CSS. Well this book gives you a good idea. It is not really about learning CSS but at least it gives a good idea about all the possibilities. Each time I get stuck in the limits of CSS, I get back to this book.....

Since I'm a frequent visitor to the excellent CSS Zen Garden web site, I purchased this book hoping that it would enlighten me regarding the technical implementation of some of the more advanced CSS designs. Unfortunately, I think the book just misses the mark. What you get is a brief six page explanation of a particular design concept for each of the 36 included designs. This is all good, but I was hoping to see at least a few of the very advanced designs completely dissected in explanation, from beginning of the source to the end. Intermediate CSS coders will undoubtedly pick up a useful technique or two. Still, it's a good book that could have been great.

I very much liked how the book skipped the basics of CSS and went into how it was used to affect the design of the example pages. It became a bit dry at about the halfway point for me but still worthy of a 5-star rating.

Ever since my eyes were laid upon the 'Zen Garden' I was reborn. Being a 'pretty picture' designer I was searching for a way to easily convey what was in my head into/onto my favourite 'user agents'. I turned away from the 'flash' revolution because of this project. So now I have this beautifully documented masterpiece right here in front of me and what can I tell you?!? Everything you need for web design success is all here. There is a vast amount of in-depth 'how-to/how-not-to/how-they-did/how-you-do' information detailing every aspect of the 'garden' and it's secrets. You'll fall in love again!

The Zen of CSS Design is the better choice to teach CSS Design for the visual thinkers. The visual language is intensively used, the concepts starts from visual, using the layout of Zen CSS Garden Web site, to the CSS tags, rendering the CSS codes more easier to understand.

This book is mostly about design principles and much less about CSS. Useful information but not the hard hitting CSS principles I would have expected.

CSS Zen Garden, Eric Meyers and Jeffry Zeldman have long been at the forefront of CSS Design and their work has been the inspiration for countless applications, mostly in the niche of blogs and content sites. How their CSS table-less design methods affect e-Commerce is yet to be determined, but the techniques for layout is surprisingly well suited for search engine optimization.

New eCommerce applications from Zen Cart (Open Source) to our own CSSCommerce (commercial) have been equally inspired by the compliant coding promoted by this book.

CSS Zen Garden is richly beautiful in its own right and one can immediatly see the advantage of using the techniques found here as the cornerstone of high-end web site design. But, as it applies to e-Commerce, the information is strangely lacking... more needs to be written.

Forms, columns and rows of products, the mainstays of eCommerce are untouched by this book.

When I first started reading this book, I thought the premise was a bit artificial -- take a single web page and, using only CSS style sheets, give it a myriad of different looks.

By its middle, I was starting to notice a pattern: designers had to bend over backwards to use just CSS -- when a little extra HTML would have gone a long way. It still seemed, well, hokey.

But at the end, I realized that I had learned a great deal about how CSS is actually applied, and that while the exercise was artifical, the lessons learned were not. I had a great deal more insight than a mechanical walk through CSS would have provided.

It's not a primer on CSS, for sure, and presumes a lot in the reader. But, better to be challenged than, pardon the pun, mollycoddled...

THe table of Contents has subheadings of this kind:
Revolutions!
No Frontiers!
Coastal Breeze
Ocean Apart
... YOu cannot find your way with such labelling. The authors aspire to be poets when they are supposed to be guides, pedagogues, tutors to help you out with learning CSS and learning how to design pages.

The index does not have much in term of CSS keywords.

If you are not a creative person, buy this book and educate your eye. If you are a creative person this book won't help you and you are going to waste a lot of time reading blabblabla.

Though there is valuable information inside, but it is impossible to access/find it very easily. The authors are very knowledgeable. That is too bad that they know how to design web sites but don't know how to convey information in a book form.

I bought this book (knowing it wasn't a how-to) on CSS, but hoping to gather something about coding from it. I realized, after just a couple chapters, that I've learned more about coding by simply studying the code of the csses(?) in the book.

More importantly, I've become a better designer and artist because of this book. I've been a web designer/developer for about eight years and a graphic artist for about five. I thought I was alright, but this book taught me more than everything I've gleened in the past several years.

Because of this (and, despite the fact that it's not what I thought when I purchased it), I give it five stars. Highly recommended!

The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag is based off of the popular web site http://www.csszengarden.com/ CSS Zen Garden. The purpose of the site was to take plain HTML and add ONLY CSS to the layout and design to make it visually attractive. The results are amazing - gone are the boring days of black text on a white background - these pages are accessible, read by most browsers, and are all done with CSS, proving what a powerful tool CSS is to a web designer.

The book takes the site a step further by adding comment to most popular sites in the Zen garden. Broken down by Source, Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects, and Reconstruction, each chapter in the section spends about 3-5 pages explaining the concept as it relates to a Zen Garden site. For example, chapters under design high level discuss minimalism, shadows and space, color choice, patterns and textures, and leading the eye. This is a beautiful marriage of hard core coding meeting graphic design.

I bought the book thinking it would be more of a picture book and was surprised how many basic and advanced concepts were discussed. I learned more about how to make CSS creative - and how to do this correctly.

You know what zen gardens are, right? Like those little desktop trays containing sand, a few pebbles, and a rake that you can use to arrange the "garden" in any way you like, leaving it for the next person to appreciate but ultimately remake according to their own tastes. The Zen of CSS Design, the companion book to the awesome website (http://www.csszengarden.com) is like that, except that hundreds of web designers have the same flat HTML file and then rearranged it to their own purposes with nothing more than a new cascading style sheet and their own graphics. Go browse through the site and tell me it's not amazing what people have done.

The book takes 36 of the best designs on the sites and uses them as examples in brief and to-the-point chapters designed to illustrate (literally) important lessons in web design and CSS coding. We very rarely use the word "beautiful" but this book is indisputably beautiful. The whole thing is in full, gorgeous color, and the pages are oversized enough so that the authors don't have to compromise when using screenshots to make their points.

As an inspirational tool, the book is superlative. I'm so full of ideas now! My only complaint is that many of the chapters are too short and shallow, relying as they do on only one example. I'd much rather have seen, for example, a chapter on typography and font selection that made a constellation of related points using examples from half a dozen or more designs instead of just one. I also would have appreciated more "nuts and bolts" chapters that discussed some of the clever uses of CSS that the designs so obviously engage in. But where it fails as a technical manual on CSS how-tos, The Zen of CSS Design more than makes up for in beauty and its ability to energize and inspire its readers.

I'm not a "graphics" person. I struggle to understand creative design and how to build it in code. This book brought these elements together and really explained the process.

This is not a beginner's book on coding and design. It is more of an applications manual for someone who has worked with CSS. I was frequently looking at some area of a design and asking myself how, or why, did he do that? I don't think there was ever an example that left that question unanswered. If it wasn't explicit, there was always enough information and discussion to be able to figure it out. Including the code with the illustrations and explanations really tied the processes together.

This book will be kept on my 'A' references shelf. There is a detailed index and the example home pages were grouped in sections: Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects, and Reconstruction. Therefore, it will be easy to come back and locate relevant information.

'the Zen of CSS design' by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag is one of the most important web design books on the market today. The word Zen is truly the right way to describe this text, as it is laid out so carefully and calmly, you can't help but feel your heartbeat go down and your tension decrease as you enjoy this wonderful text.

Using examples developed on their own web site csszengarden.com, the authors study a myriad of different approaches, the decisions that were made when developing each of these sites, and the ways that CSS can easily be altered and modified by the web developer.

Looking at all the facets of web design from font selection, image choices, tables, color picking, etc etc etc this is the perfect resource for anyone that is in charge of designing a web site which is being used as an online application, corporate web site, or even a personal site. The authors combine years upon years of experience to produce a guide that is informative, pleasing to read, and calming to look at.

ESSENTIAL buy for all web designers that want to learn the difference between a good web site and a great web site. Learn that sometimes MINIMIZING maximizes a users experience and discover how to get there with this exceptional book.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I picked this book up as a whim more than anything and boy am I glad. Fortunately, I took the book home to read first. I talked to some of my designers about some of the practical tips that I was garnering from the book, its examples, and the links it provides. The day I brought it back to the office, the book disappeared and has been making the rounds among the designers (we don't call them webmasters).

Our most experienced css developer had read several reviews of the book that had poo-pooed it. He read it with much scepticism. He has a much less opinion of those reviewers now. He, like I, saw a lot of practical examples that immediately helped. Yes, the book is not technical. It is artistic and that is what makes it work. We can see that the techniques mentioned in the book actually work.

Our inexperienced css designer (as in never used it because she struggled with all the technical books on css we had) picked the book up next. Within a couple days, she had developed a rather complicated site using css. The book opened her eyes up to what could be done beautifully and in many cases easily.

Get a couple Meyers books if you want the technical stuff and Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference by Danny Goodman for a most excellent reference manual.

Get this book to inspire, enlight, and enjoy. You may find your enlightenment to be of more worth than the technical know how of the others.

I bought this book hoping for a CSS tutorial from the Grand Masters of CSS themselves. Instead what I read was better. This book is more of a concept book than anything. There are a few little tutorial things, but for the most part they talk about the concepts behind CSS design. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is getting into CSS. You should probably know something about CSS before reading this though.

I've had this book for 2 days and can't put it down. If you want to improve your web design skills and you use CSS for styling, this is the book for you. Beautiful designs, beautifully explained.

I love the web site but found it hard to analyze the examples by going back and forth from the code to the stylesheet to the page. This book does it for you - not every detail, but useful details, illustrating important concepts, from many designs. In true Zen fashion, it leads you back to the site to look and learn again.

Though the book could be inspiring to beginners, this book is definitely not an introduction to CSS. To use the techniques, you need to already understand the basics of CSS.

I was very happy with the contents of this book, but it isn't intended for beginners. Much of the content of the book is also available from the ZenGarden website.

I love the site (csszengarden.com) and I love the book. It is, HOWEVER (yes, that is a big however...), important that the book be used as intended. If you were expecting a CSS tutorial type book then you may be disappointed. I own virtually every CSS book published since year 2000 and this is primarily a design book that illustrates the power of CSS at its best. A reasonably astute and intelligent person, with little or no knowledge of CSS, might be able to use the book as a pedogogic tool; but it is not the best suited tool for that purpose. A much better book would be Cascading Style Sheets - Separating Content From Presentation. On the other hand, if you have just a minimal working knowledge of CSS, you can glean some fantastic techniques from this book (and also the site). It will especially appeal to graphic design experts who wish to broaden their scope of CSS knowledge and thus facilitate a better web page. Some of the designs in the book are very enthralling and surreal. I would gladly exchange some of my technical skills for just a smidgeon of these design skills! In addition, there are clearly some surprises hidden in many of the various designs. For example, I like to download sites and study them at my leisure offline. Well, imagine my surprise one day when I could not "grab" any of the background graphics from a particular site (and you will have to find it on your own but I will give you a little hint -- it is primarily green and black). This was my first encounter with this ingenious technique and I really enjoyed the "ah-ha" experience once I figured out what the author was doing. Well, there are many such treasures awaiting as you explore the book and the site. The book explains much of the reasoning behind certain techniques and design methods, which in turn better enables you to perform further investigation of other sites on your own. So, back to the original premise. If what you have read here so far perks up your interest then by all means buy the book and read it -- twice! Otherwise, reevaluate your needs.

The Zen of CSS Design is a powerful, engaging book that takes you into the very elemental details that make CSS such a potent tool for use in web development. I would recommend this as a must have book for the CSS library - and the corresponding web site is a must visit and revisit location to get real CSS code to review and practice with.

The book is chuck full of images - each page takes you on a detailed adventure into one of some thirty six actual CSS designs - each very different from the other, and yet each one containing the same content such as verbiage and links. There are six main sections the book focuses on - Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects, and Reconsruction.

Every chapter contains real world advice and many snips of code and several full CSS code sections - I was a joy to read and is going to make a great resource - reference book for the future.

I am yet to dive into the details of the book. But the printing, beautiful organization, the typeset, the referencing, and the paper itself deserve more than $24/-.

I read the beginning part of the book and it sounds really wonderful. As the authors say, this book is about learning ``to-design'' rather than just ``knowing-the-code.''

Best
A

From a developer point of view, it is a very good and comprehensive reading. It is a must reading for all web designers who want to cope up with the future of Internet. It opens my eyes for new possibilities and improvements on my existing and future projects. Covers everything you need to start designing a web site with Web Standards. The chapters gradually become more and more difficult towards the end of the book. Proves that CSS and XHTML are not as hard as what it seems at first time. Not too technical nor an art book. Can be use as a reference on various tricks and techniques on applying CSS with XHTML. Simply a must have book! Thanks to Shea for writing a very good one. I hope it will help spreading out the Web Standards to all web developers all over the world.

This is a valuable book to the shelf of any web designer. But set your expectations correctly. I think many of those who give this a low score do so because they want a computer programming book. This does have some CSS code in it, and has many helpful hints to resolve browser (99% of which are IE!!) issues, but spends most of its time discussion the particular area of web page design (as opposed to print design) and how the experienced and novices alike should address this medium.

Approach this from the perspective of what can CSS do for me, and how do designers approach the topic, and you will be very pleasantly surprised.

And finally, my favourite page on the Zen Garden website is this page (for me it stands head and shoulders above all others, although I expect many may disagree!):

Shea has earned his spot as a respected authority in the Web Design space. And "The Zen of CSS Design" encapsulates in a volume the essence of this discipline and what CSS as a tool allows the web designer. Though some argue that this is more of a book on design than a book on CSS, I say it's neither one.

"The Zen of CSS Design" cannot be considered a CSS reference, yet it offers some valuable tips and explanations for some of the best designs submitted to the author's now legendary site, CSS Zen Garden. Still, I wouldn't call it a design book either, yet it goes through most of the essentials of web design (and arguably, design in general) to take into account when crafting the looks of your site.

In the end, assuming the reader is not new to either discipline, the book borrows the essentials from CSS and design and provides an exquisite piece that will enlighten you and inspire you to take your web designs to the next level.

This is a beautiful book, not only does it explain by example CSS concepts from beginner syntax right through to advanced techniques, but its just a nice book to read with some great visuals. It really does the CSS Zen Garden justice and is a nice book to just pick up and leaf through every now and then. Very unconventional for what is essentially a CSS textbook.

The Zen of CSS Design is an excellent book with a lot of ideas and inspirations. It allowed me to understand the background of CSS Zengarden and it's elaboration on several techniques proved to be valuable for my own projects as well. I am currently managing a few little projects and made every webdeveloper read this book. It allowed them to get in touch with their creative side and the turnout is fantastic. I highly recommend this book for people who are web developers, but tend to focus more on the structured development side, for creative professionals looking to design web pages and for leads who want to update their knowledge on CSS. Be ware though that the book requires some previous programming exposure and CSS knowledge.

I bought this book because I was working on a website with good content but poor presentation. I wanted to get ideas about how to make a website look good and be web standards compliant. This book has certainly given me a lot of inspiration and tips on how to improve the presentation using CSS. The CSS snippets throughout are great for explaining simply how special effects can be achieved.

This is a book that will still be relevant when web technologies change because it gives a glimpse of the big picture: how content can be displayed in so many different and interesting ways. In the end, that's what every web designer is trying to achieve, no matter how they do it today or tomorrow.

this book focuses only on one project that is outdated on the web. It does not teach you, or shows you how to code. It takes some of the examples, created by random people and talks about a few tricks that are used on their pages. The examples of design, which is chosen, are horrible, especially when it comes to the use of typography.

This is an odd sort of book, written by the creator of the CSS Zen Garden, which is a masterwork.

The CSS Zen Garden is a place where beauty and craft meet, and sometimes in absolutely brilliant ways; that's the beauty aspect; however, this book is about the craft aspect not beauty, which is disappointing.

All of the designs that are described are good examples of the various design subjects being discussed, such as typography or the use of color. But for all that they exemplify craft, they are all also rather bland.

Missing from this book are the designs that are beautiful. The most egregious omission is Mozart, which is one of the most visually arresting designs I have ever seen on the whole of the Internet, to say nothing of this site.

Other overlooked beautiful designs are Odyssey, Dark Rose, Invitation, C Note, Egyptian Dawn and Mediterranean. The book is much the worse for omitting these designs.

A beautifully put together book on CSS ... it should be since the topic is web design. It shows what can be done with CSS and how to get CSS layout to cooperate. You'll need to view the CSS code on the Zen web site as you read through the book if you want to thoroughly understand how each design is implemented.

I'm not feeling it. This didn't help put all of the peices together for me. Its not particularly bad, just not my style. May be good for some people. I prefer the bulletproof book & the zeldman book on the same subject much more.

A good book that works to explain the website and some of the designs. It will not show you how to build CSS driven websites like this or give you a tutorial, but will rather show you the possibilities of what can be done and give you some explanation on how they can be done. Interesting, but looking at the website is almost as valuable.

Yes, I admit this book is not as technical as one would think when thinking about books on CSS. However, this book has opened up my eyes to the art-side of web design like no other book has. I've read "art" books, and I've read "technical" books. This book brings me the best of both worlds, looking at the art side of technical websites.
I recommend this book for those who have faith in the art side of web design and don't just see them making boxy websites for corporates for the rest of their life.

This book, combined with the web site (of the same name) provides a wealth of information and inspiration for every web designer. CSS is the only way to design and this book gives you the most variety I have ever found, and they provide compelling, if not inspirational, reasons for switching to CSS.

The only thing I can say bad about the book is it's lack of technical information. There are a few CSS and HTML examples to give you ideas of how you can push the CSS envelop to build exciting page layouts, but I would have preferred more discussion into the code that makes each site an outstanding example of CSS design.

Overall this is a great book...!

The Zen of CSS Design is a book about the application of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) over a structure of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). I like to look at CSS as the paint and decorating that is applied over the frame and drywall of a house. These things can change over time while the underlying structure of the house remains the same.

Dave Shea, the creator of the CSS Zen Garden, one of the first groundbreaking CSS galleries, and Molly E. Holzschlag, one of the preeminent designers on the web, do well in not only showcasing many of the best designs from the website, but also in explaining the techniques used by them.

Web design can be taken to so many different degrees. There are people and companies who do the bare minimum of design work: text on a plain background with one or two images scattered here and there. But even this is a design choice. The way navigation is designed is a choice, the colors and images and borders are choices, and the use of web standards technologies like CSS or Flash are design choices.

The way the CSS Zen Garden website works is that one HTML file was created, and each designer uses that same structure to create their own design. Their CSS styles are layered -or "cascaded," if you will--over that structure to create an original look and feel, but at the same time delivering the very same content as everyone else. The point of the project is to showcase the efficiency and flexibility of CSS as a design tool. This is in contrast to using HTML-only or proprietary browser technologies for design.

The book is split up into seven chapters, each talking about a specific type of design: examining the structure, a design overview, layout, imagery, typography, special effects and reconstruction. The book does a great job of using more than 36 different CSS designs from the website as examples of exploring the everyday challenges and problems faced by web designers. These challenges include using the right amounts of contrast and color in a design to make the content as readable and usable as possible. Using the correct type and design in typography also goes a long way in design of a website. Normal browser text is replaced by images using CSS to better fit in with the overall page design. Elements of typographical design such as leading and tracking are controlled by CSS to make type readable as well. Design elements are repeated in some different ways, sometimes in different colors so as to mark separate sections of the site.

Overall I think this book does a splendid job of showcasing the multiple ways that CSS can be used to display and enhance content on the web. However, I do not believe that this book should be read as a starting-out point for anyone interested in learning CSS or HTML. This is written for those who have at least some experience with writing stylesheets already, and will be a great addition to their collection. The designers that are included and reviewed in this book such as Shaun Inman, Douglas Bowman and Jon Hicks are some of the top CSS and design experts in the world. They all continue to make breakthroughs in design to this day.

This book is a little outdated now, three years after being published, but the techniques used are (and will be) just as viable if used tomorrow. That is the point of proper CSS design as opposed to HTML design, is that designers should create with forward-thinking in mind. CSS is a web standard that leaves the content alone. Even if CSS techniques expire or are replaced in the future, the content will always be there. The CSS can be changed but will only be a layer of paint over the drywall.

I bought this book years ago wanting to learn CSS before it became popular. I have always loved the artwork produced on csszengarden's web site. I figured that the book would teach me css. I was somewhat wrong. The book covers techniques the page developers used to create some of the artwork, but never really explains what the different settings mean. The book also seemed to jump around and did not flow with any explanation. I ended up learning CSS from the web. Even now that I know CSS extensively, I have gone back and read this book again and can really see how it jumps around and does not explain the techniques very well. I do still keep the book in my toolbox for some reference, but hardly ever look at it anymore.

I've only breezed through this book, but bought it because I wanted it as the companion to their website - css zen garden dot com - and I'm happy I did. You can download all the corresponding code from their site that goes along with this book (instead of having to type it all in manually).

After 9 years of old-style HTML coding, I'm upgrading my skills to the new CSS/XHTML. This book takes the focus away (momentarily) from code and points to beauty. I'm looking forward to becoming a designer like the ones in this book.

Beautiful and inspiring!

.. but I fully expect to. Having followed the csszengarden site from nearly the beginning, I wouldn't miss it. I was learning css on my own when I came across the site.. being a visual artist, and unabashedly a "web DESIGNER" - I finally FINALLY felt that I had found my calling, my mecca on the pages of the site with all of the talented designers.

I learned SO MUCH downloading the css and trying my own stuff -- I actually credit the site for helping me to finally understand css and how it could be stretched - how it could be made to do the things I had always wanted to do. My kudos to everyone involved!

Open your mind! We are not in the 90's any more. Slash pages are stupid, web-counters are stupid. We are in the XI century and web should look like it. If you want to create beauty, this is your book.

This book tries to be an answer for all. Instead of focusing one one subject (just css) it explains all of standard based code. From how to create XHTML whose design can be modified completely through only css, the benefits of standard based code, the problems making css compatible with multiple browsers (you could play quite the drinking game counting how many times you encounter IE workarounds), and the various design elements websites designers need to be aware of and how they are implemented in css, this has it all. Not for begginers, this book will not teach you most of the fundamentals of CSS, and is supposed to be more of a companion book to those types of books. It is organized on a per example bases (each chapter is titled by an example of a style on the csszengarden.com website). Because of this, the book can be a little bit disorginized and repetitive, but the information contained within makes up for it. If you are just getting started into css design, I would not recommend this book, but if you are interested in css design, and have some knowledge of it with some extra cash to spend, this is your book.

A very good book to learn to see, to think and to create pretty pages with the CSS aid.

Haven't read the entire book yet, but so far it's the best book on css and webdesign i've read. All other books just mention the applications functions and ways to code it but they never go into design, this book does just that. Plus great designs are examples in every chapter.

I bought this book understanding that it would help me learn CSS design, but soon found that it was not for the beginner but for an experienced CSS practitioner. The book is divided into themes such as 'Layout', 'Typography', etc. and illustrates the points being made by references to examples on the web site.

You can browse to the relevant pages and read the CSS code to understand how effects were made. As such the book is an inspiration for beginners to aim for after they have had some experience with CSS, perhaps by going to the original inventors, Lie and Bos: Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition).

Very readable and enjoyable book. The authors' carefully chosen example designs are dissected to highlight key CSS concepts. The process examples were especially enlightening for me. Even the references at end of the book were spot-on.

I came across this book due to my love of the great website of the same name as the book. If you are a web designer or want to see some better ways to make your online web presence look better, and more slick, this book is a great addition to your tool box.

I am a big fan of the website which is a big source of inspiration, and was very happy when I found out that there was a book.
And now... Disappointment.

First of all, the cover is very ugly, and the book's format is a bit clunky.
The designs they have chosen are nothing special, kind of boring designs. Why did they choose these designs, when there are much more interesting designs on the site?

And the book also feels a bit out-of-date. Hey, they even talk about Netscape!

Nope, spend your money on some other book. Read the CSS on the website!

I recieved my order fast, the book was in great shape, and wouldn't hesitate to order from amazon! Great service!

A great book with excellent examples and descriptions on how to implement a CSS web solution.

This book is fantastic for layouts and suggestions. While it is not the simplist thing for the beginner it is very good for layouts and suggestions on ways to make your own CSS better and HTML lighter.

A wonderful reference book. Very inspirational. All web designers bible.

This extraordinary, beautiful and amazing book explains, in detail, the designs illustrated on the Zen Garden web site. This is a book to read, to savor and to come back to. It is part tutorial, part reference book and part inspiration.

No one who is doing web development can afford to ignore CSS for long, and this is the book that takes you beyond CSS as a simple tool for design and brings you to CSS as the missing third leg in creating world-class web applications: [..]for server side technology; Ajax for client side responsiveness and enhanced customer experience, and CSS for separation of data from presentation and layout. An astonishing book. Highly recommended.

This book was a good read and a great reference. Not as techie as most might think, but it does do a good job of showing beautiful sites and then giving the related CSS examples.

I expected another one of those books where they show you a lot of cool stuff but don't give you source knowledge.

Great Job! to Mr. Shea and Ms. Holzschlag

It's basically a book that hypes the parent website. I read this book hoping to actually learn HOW to do some of the stuff I'd seen on csszengarden.com. It does go into some detail, but at such a shallow depth you soon realize you would've been better served just checking the source code on the site itself. CSS is a huge topic, and I wouldn't even give this book credit with scratching the tip of the iceberg.

I would definetly recommend skimming this at a bookstore before purchasing, I think you'll find it's not quite the book it's made out to be.

This book is a great introduction to what is possible using CSS design. It is a worthwhile addition to the web site by the same name. Viva web standards!!

This book are wonderful. The visual style and the content are marvellous. And to improve it is full coloured (all pages).
I recomend it to anyone who love CSS and aprecciate a good book.