Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

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I'm a Web designer for one of the big three office supply chains in the US. This book is never more than an arm's reach away from my workstation, and I consult it almost daily. Unlike other XHTML/CSS books that examine what's theoretically possible, Cederholm's book focuses on foolproof solutions to common Web design issues. It is engagingly written and beautifully lain out. With this book and a basic knowledge of CSS, you'll be creating pages that not only look great, but make the Web a better place. This is the new Web bible. Buy it, read it, live it.

If you are just coming over the the standards-compliant light, this book is the best for showing real, working techniques. Great examples that work. A cookbook. Cederholm won my heart and my mind with "Web Standards Solutions" and this book builds on that theme. The man is a good writer, easy to understand, and he makes compelling and lucid points.

Cederholm's presentation is great: he states a problem or goal, then examines several different ways of solving it. The examinations are just a paragraph or two long -- short and to the point. He points out the strengths and weaknesses of the various solutions, then concludes with a "best practices" solution. Finally, he builds on and refines the best practices solution to deliver a finished piece. When there is no clear-cut best way, he lays the cards on the table and let's you decide what is best for your specific application. He talks about the compromises between pixel-perfect layouts and fluid layouts and how each effects design and useability issues.

It is not stand-alone because a good reference is still useful to have by your side.

This is quite a good book with a tremendous amount of good advice for those creating web sites, but the book suffers from one major problem.

The entire crux of the book centers around using keyword sizes for text. The author claims that visually impaired people must be able to increase font size in the browser and your web design must be built around this one need. It's a good thought but I wonder how many people do this.

People who are visually impaired will usually choose an audible screen reader or a screen magnifier - rendering keyword sizing unimportant. Users can use their own stylesheets to control font sizes.

In order to accomplish a reasonable design using keyword-sized text, the author relies upon one of two CSS browser hacks. The problem with this is that it is neither bulletproof, nor standards complient and very likely to break with the next round of browsers released.

The reality is that many sites use pixel based font sizing not just to control the look and feel of the site, but to make sure information is displayed correctly. I am all for separating presentation from semantics, but there is an overlp between font size, color, and placement and semantics. NO matter what some of the standards Nazis will have you believe - deign carries meaning.

That being said, the book is not without it's merits. Web developers should be moving towards more accessible, semantically marked up html and correct CSS. The real problem with web standards is that they aren't standard. As a developer I choose to stay away from hacks.

You can learn a lot from this book, and probably implement it for smaller, less data-intense web sites.

I don't want to knock the book too much because I greatly respect the author and am an avid reader of his terrific website simplebits.com.

However, what none of the rave reviews here have told you is that this book is really for newbie designers. If you have been in the business for more than a year or two, this stuff should pretty much be second nature.

I have been working as a web designer for 6 years, and made the change over to table-less designs - seperating design from content - a couple of years ago. I am always looking for ways to do things better, and was hoping this book would give me tips to take me to the next level.

But rather, instead of taking me to the next level of web design as I had hoped, all I got was the same stuff I have been reading on ALA and other sites for months - or even years!

Yes, the book is beautifully designed and very well written. Yes, it is divided into short easy-to-follow chapters with step-by-step instructions. Yes, Dan Cederholm is excellent in presenting his thoughts on paper and comes up with some quite clever solutions to common problems we designers face every day.

The problem is that all of the information in this book has already been posted in articles around the web. So if you follow his blog, and/or blogs from other leading designers, you really don't need this book.

I bought it based on the overwealmingly positive reviews here at Amazon. However, after completing the book in less than 3 hours, I hadn't read one single idea or solution that I havn't already been using in my designs. (Granted, I learned many of the techniques I use today from wonderful and helpful sites such as Dan's simplebits.com, so it is only fair that he gets some of my money. I only wish I was aware of exactly what I was paying for.)

My advice is to save your money and go to mezzoblue.com, csszengarden.com, alistapart.com and simplebits.com where you will find all you need to know to be a great web designer.

I was disappointed - not because the CSS stuff is poorly presented, because it's on the better side of average, but because to learn this book's stuff, or try to emulate some of the examples, requires a knowledege of Photoshop. For example, you need to know how to create an image with a gradient applied to a canvas, or to create a 1 pixel transparent row within an image - something that your average person may takes weeks to learn on his own. Photoshop is not all that intuitive to just grab a copy and simply create an image that the author uses.

And the author's website to support the book lacks the images we could use - just to get through with the book's examples.

By the way, the images the author uses do not even specify their size, so even trying to recreate these images augments this inherent problem.

This is an excellent book on CSS. The title is a little misleading, as it is really about creating bulletproof web designs using CSS. It does not address any of the myriad of other topics that would make a site bulletproof like security, XHTML, web servers, application servers, etc. etc.

If you don't know what CSS is yet, then this book is certainly not for you. If you are looking for a basic getting started book on HTML, with a little on CSS I would suggest the VERY excellent Elizabeth Castro book, now in its sixth edition entitled "HTML, XHTML and CSS, sixth Edition" a Quick Start quide, of course available on Amazon.

Dan Cederholm's book "Bulletproof Web Design's" is a good companion to other more basic books, once you know that you want to use CSS to format web sites, and have a clue how to use it.

The one problem I have with this book, is that it _only_ provides the CSS. There is absolutely no HTML anywhere, which makes looking at examples a litle tough. The graphic illustrations of the results look great, the examples are useful, well explained and in a logical order.

This is certainly one of several books to have around when creating a modern web site with HTML and CSS.

In fact, it can be a good companion for those who both hand-code sites, and use professional tools like Dreamweaver.

So, as a CSS book, I give it 5 stars, as a general bulletproof web design book, I give it 3 stars, because it really has very little content about the other relevant subjects.. But, I'll be fair and rate this as a CSS book, title notwithstanding, and give it 5 stars.

Bulletproof Web Design does an incredible job of teaching, step-by-step, how to make your website `Bulletproof.' The author introduced the book by defining what it means to have a bulletproof website. He used the example of a police officer wearing a bulletproof vest. No, it is not 100% protection against a bullet - but it decreases the chances and is extra protection. When applied to a website, this means that your website can handle the `bullets' being thrown at it. These are things like text resizing, use of assistive devices, no CSS, no images, and a few other examples.

The thing I liked most about this book is that it wasn't preaching web standards - It was simply walking you through each chapter - with each chapter building on the last - and showing you techniques that WORK. The book itself does an incredible job of keeping your attention through the use of images, highlighting, and full code listing. For those who can't quite grasp CSS (especially positioning and the like), this book is extremely helpful through its thorough explanations and visuals. Screenshots are provided each step of the way to let you see your progress.

Each chapter introduces you to new ways of handling things like text display, link display, navigation, list elements, layouts, floating, positioning, and a few others. Each chapter first take an example of a website (or aspect of a website) that is NOT bulletproof, then re-constructs that example with semantic XHTML and CSS to show you the results. The last chapter of the book brings it all together and shows you how it could be used in a production environment, with each piece of the puzzle being put together. The author doesn't dwell on the array of hacks and filters - but simply lists the ones that he uses and how they get the job done (and why they are needed).

Using proper XHTML and CSS is sometimes misunderstood. This is where many will start with a bad case of classitis and divitis and start going crazy adding extra markup. The author does a great job of creating very lean, structured, semantic XHTML. This is the XHTML that is friendly to browsers and other devices alike, as well as rich in meaning. Using proper elements to get the job done is vitally important to the meaning of the website itself. He focuses on this aspect, and with each chapter discusses the importance of the structure and not adding unnecessary presentational markup to your pages. It is this separation of presentation and content that ultimately makes using proper CSS a wise choice.

Quite frankly, this is one of the best CSS books I have read - and would recommend it to both the beginner and advanced CSS developer. This review doesn't even do the book justice - mainly because you need to buy it and read it to really enjoy the context as a whole. There are many things I could explain in more detail, and there are many different things that I learned through reading this book (some of which were things that were needed immediately). This is a no-fluff CSS book that brings everything together nicely, and a must have for any web developers bookshelf!

While Dan's book might not teach anything new (or at least he's not inventing any new language), it's actually one of the most valuable web design books you can purchase.

Dan Cederholm does a great job of collecting and displaying the right amount of information, that will be applicable to the most people in the most popular of situations. The techniques used throughout are essential benchmarks that every modern web designer should know and love. It's also very easy to read, and enjoyable too, showcasing each chapter with a visual style not seen in tech books of the past.

I've read a lot of good about this book and a lot of good from Dan Cederholm so I had my hopes up when I got this book. I have to admit I was a bit let down.

Don't get me wrong, it does a fantastic job in exposing how easy it is to convert old and clumsy design to new, slick, CSS based design with very little effort.

It feels short though and, at times, repetative. The entire last chapter, while meant to be a recap of all the previous chapters, feels unnecessary as the entire book is only 260 pages. There's very little need for a recap when you read the entire book in a couple of hours.

It's not a great reference book either. While you can look up the chapter about indestructible boxes in order to check how Dan actually anchors all the corners, it's not laid out in a manner that encourages this (and I don't think that was the idea with the book to begin with either).

I did get a lot of inspiration and the section about floats was quite informative, though I would like some more information about what we're doing instead of just enough to solve the specific problem.

At times Dan hints to how to use certain tricks to achieve a certain result that's not part of the current design but most of the time the book points to various (mostly excellent) resources on the net where you need to continue your research on your own.

One thing the book does great is pointing out how important it is to have "logical" and intelligent markup before you start applying CSS and that CSS isn't the solution to every single design problem on the Internet.

I think the book is pricey considering that it's short and you will probably not use it as a reference guide once you get the hang of the ideas and tricks Dan teaches out.

If you on the other hand need to get a kickstart as far as designing with CSS goes then it's invaluable. I'm never going to use tables the same way as I used to, for instance.

Simply put, I like Dan's approach. I have attempted all of the ideas he presents in this book and they've all rendered properly in IE6, Mozilla 1.03, and Opera 8.5. I haven't tried the examples in legacy browsers such as Netscape 4, which apprently bungles CSS to bits. He claims it works in those browsers... and I believe him.

His ideas allow users (site visitors) to resize their text without distorting page layout - bottom line. I've tested that as well. Remember the days of table based layout. If a user chose to increase his font size, tables would stretch and the integrity of the layout would be severly compromised. Not with Dan's approach. Your text stays contained within it's elements, because the elements adjust to the font size of the text they contain... pretty nifty.

More importantly, his layouts display properly in text based browsers because of proper use of semantic markup. Same goes for palm pilots, and other non-traditional methods of viewing web pages. In simple terms, his ideas meet the standards of the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Remember not being able to view javascript menus of yesteryear, because javascript was disabled... forget about it... no need to write javascript menus anymore, because CSS can handle all of those fun mouseover-type effects for you (if javascript is your bag, I would recommend Jeremy Keith's book - DOM Scripting).

OK, that's should probably do it.

In general Cederholm presents good ideas for how to approach "bulletproof" web design, but not every idea in the book is 100% bulletproof. For example, in the Indestructible Boxes chapter he suggests creating border and background images that are "larger" than necessary to accommodate large amounts of content. This strategy isn't entirely "bulletproof" in my opinion because you can never know for sure how large a piece of content might be (e.g. on a blog site), and its unreasonable to create an image that is 10,000 pixels tall for such a case.

You have to pick where each idea will work and where it won't work - and that's fine. It's realistic that an idea won't work in 100% of the real world. I just wouldn't call all of these ideas "bulletproof", but maybe just "better".

That being said, Cederholm's book talks about a LOT of aspects of CSS and XHTML that are underused by many web developers. It's an excellent book to learn good principles of agile web page design, but take it with the mentality that it's not always "bulletproof" and that each idea has its place. The book is will written and to the point and the ideas are presented very well.

I've been doing HTML since the mid-90's and I like to admit it, but I did not really follow its evolution. I understood very little about XHTML and CSS and used those technologies badly.

This book is like a bootcamp, it learned me the new techniques in a straight to the point way, the way I like it.

I definately recommend it! Well worth the money and the time!

After building enough sites from scratch, and wanting to make darn sure they were browser friendly and accessible, I got this book due to it addressing cross-browser problems and techniques for accessibility.

Now the practical knowledge in this book is great. It's the no-hold-bars dirty hacking of CSS/XHTML to force it to work in browsers, and address how to get sites to be more accessible (like addressing text sizing that scales accordingly in IE 7 and FF, and to look similar in each browser). Added benefit it even shows you how to tweak the Blogger Tic-Tac template, to be even better -- for beginning bloggers, this is very sweet.

But, I learned that this book is geared to the 10% of the web browser market (Firefox), which meant code examples to experiment with weren't friendly to IE 7. Worse, the code explanations were quite elementary -- dictation/narrative style -- which didn't give me enough info to know WHAT I was doing. Efforts to tweak examples (like in Chapter 4) required over an hour trying to get the floats to not break, if I resized them -- all because the explanations were so scant to know what variables to tweak.

Really wanted to like this book, as it's tailored for two main headaches in web design (cross-browser friendliness; accessibility tweaking) that's not often covered in other CSS/(X)HTML books. Alas, the search is on for a CSS/XHTML book that is truly cross-browser friendly. :/

Bulletproof Web Design tackles some of the common design problems on modern websites. Each chapter takes the approach of defining a problem, usually in the context of what was wrong with the old table-based, inaccessible approach, and showing how to implement it using CSS and XHTML. The book is very readable. The examples are concise and clear and with plenty of pictures.

Topics covered:
- techniques for defining boxes with rounded corners, that can be made expandable
- planing for accessibility by organizing the page logically and allowing the text to be resized without making the page look bad
- using floats to achieve grid-like appearance (instead of tables)
- handling vertical expansion
- fluid layouts

I also recommend these books on CSS:
Accessible XHTML and CSS Web Sites Problem Design Solution and CSS: The Missing Manual

First and foremost, I am not a web designer. I do have alot of experience in application development on all tiers (database, application, plus web). I was taught web design before CSS was a major factor in web application design (a while ago, I know). I have not updated my web skillsets in relation to CSS. So my layout consisted mainly of nested tables (when I figured out how to get that done, I was pretty excited about that). But after a while, I ended up with a lot of ugly code that was hard to maintain plus troubleshoot. This book is very simple, straight to the point, with excellent working examples. It teaches you what you need to know concerning layout, navigation, some of the core concepts that every site needs (using only CSS), which has reduced my overall presentation code tremendously, allowing me to focus on functionality rather than spending alot of time on presentational aspects. I cannot recommend this book enough!

His work really is bullet-proof. I've spent time playing with what he has in a variety of browsers, changing my text sizes on those browsers, etc...and this CSS is hard to break.

For those looking to take a basic knowledge of CSS to the next level, this is a great book. Basically, I had finally gone from table-based layout to CSS. While my work has been getting better, I think this book really helped me move it a step further. His practical examples are especially useful.

The book is very helpful for web designers and web developers that are not "CSS masters" like me. I know a lot of CSS, but it is not my core expertise and often done by others with me doing only the development part of the website (the basic html, dynamic content and database integration).

It shows on very real examples the mistakes you can make, the consequences of those mistakes and solutions for how to do it right.
Being busy with solving other problems, people like me tend often to forget about the fact that there are different browsers with different settings are used by people and that your screen resolution might only be the resolution which is used by a fraction of the people using the Internet.

This book brings those issues on the table and provides straight forward and easy to implement solutions for those issues that save you time trying stuff yourself, only to run into new problems again.

I wish I would have bought this book much earlier. It would have saved me so much time and headaches.

Dan's book has been incredible in helping me built great UIs that truly are bulletproof. I'm currently working with a mega-church to design a completely new website, and Bulletproof stays on my desk as a terrific reference. I'm amazed at how easy writing clean code is and how bulletproof it really is. Something like a box with links that I used to build out of complex tables and sliced images (that would invariably break in certain conditions) can now be done with a couple of divs, a couple of images, and a few lines of CSS. Amazing! This is a must have book for all designers.

If you believe that CSS should be heavily used when designing web pages (and you know it should be), this is one of the books you simply must read. Packed with realistic examples, problem-solving tips and working code, it was exactly what I was looking for.

This book is great for those of you who have been learning and teaching yourself XHTML and CSS through experimentation and trial and error. It opens you eyes to concepts that many web developers ignore and clients don't even realize exist.
It's sad how people just take websites for their face value and don't consider visitors who need to "modify" these websites (eg. make the text larger).
This book shows you how to try your best to make the site functional for all types of users. However, it doesn't dive in the advanced territory. Andy Budd's CSS Mastery book would be a great next-book after this one.

I am a web designer. I use Dreamweaver and only knew how to put web pages together using nested tables, driving myself crazy when they pulled apart on me for no reason. I decided to look into this CSS thing. I read tutorials online which gave me a bit of knowledge then decided to buy a book or two. I bought CSS Mastery form Friends of Ed and I bought this book.
After 2 chapters of CSS Mastery, I only became more confused so I turned to this book- and what a book it is!! Just reading through some chapters at lunchtime I began to gain understanding. Then doing the examples at home really locked it down. By taking the real world examples- the way designers have learned to make web pages in the past- and then showing an EASIER and QUICKER way to do them... priceless.
Everything is covered here. From the pieces on a page (rounded boxes, lists, etc) through to a full page incorporating everything. This is the book. I can now read CSS Mastery and understand what is going on.
I fully recommend this book. And if you use Dreamweaver like I do, it just makes it even that much easier!
Plus, the errors in this book were basically non-existent. All of the code worked. If you go to the Friends of Ed website and see the pages of errors for CSS Mastery, you will see the difference. I don't want to have to go through a book fixing errors before I can sit down and read it.
If you want to learn CSS, get this book. It is all you really need!!

A superbly written dissection of popular website pages and their reconstruction using clean separation of semantic content and visual design. Excellent techniques for creating bulletproof text formatting and fluid / dynamic column structures without using the older "table" formatting. I've already applied several of his techniques to clean up "dirty" HTML pages and the results are dramatic in both reduction of code and clarity. If you are not fully conversant with HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, and XML, you may want to have other references by your side since this book focuses on techniques to improve web page design and assumes knowledge of the previously mentioned technologies. All examples are thoroughly discussed in step-by-step detail, very well illustrated in color, and printed on high quality paper.

I like the style of this book. It's got a nice graphic look, and the writing is easy to understand and has a friendly tone. The examples are laid out very well - new code is highlighted with red text, which is very helpful. I really like the approach of gradually adding more elements to CSS, explaining each as you go. And finally, I like the overall structure, which is to explain the "standard" way of doing something, then explain why that's not the best approach, and then to present the "bulletproof" way of doing the same thing.

However, I'm not sure I buy the author's suggestion that it's imperative to move from old-style HTML markup to a CSS-oriented approach. His main argument is that there is usually less code, and it's easier to read a page using a cell phone, or some other non-browser device. Also, he feels that users should be able to change text size in their browser, and the page should smoothly adjust to that.

This is all true, of course. Smaller code is easier to read (which is helpful only to the developer), and it does download quicker (although most of the bandwidth consumed is usually graphics and the like, not HTML). Certainly it's a good idea to structure a page so a blind person can read it using a special device. And finally, it's a nice thing to be able to adjust the size of the text on a page.

On the other hand, there are still many problems with using CSS so it works across all browsers. The book describes many workarounds, but to me, the fact that you need these workarounds really raises the question of whether it's "better" to switch to this new style. It's a question each developer will have to think about.

I received this book as a review copy several months ago, but was in the middle of a move and didn't have time to look at it. Now that I'm working in web design, the book has become my best friend.

I had a knowledge of basic HTML four years ago, but haven't kept up with the new web standards. I am an expert user of software applications, so I don't need a book that wastes text and pictures with telling me to click Start, then click Programs, etc. I also understand the concept of styles and the difference between styles and hard-coded attributes. For the technical writers in the audience, it's the difference between using a Heading in Word to make text bold and larger, and using the Bold and Font buttons to change the text. One is much easier to change when the boss decides it should be 14 points instead of 16 points..

Each chapter starts out with a real or fictitious example of a web page element (text, navigation, rows, etc.). The examples look pretty good, but they are based on traditional HTML. Then a closer look is taken at HOW the design is made, and why it is not "bulletproof". Specifying the font in pixels is great for the designer when it comes to control, but when someone has less than 20/20 vision and needs to make the text larger, it fails miserably. The author then lists the alternatives, and examples of when to use which alternative.

This book is exactly what I need at this point in my business. I am working for a client with several existing sites, many of which were developed with templates and in traditional HTML. While the sites may look OK on the surface, if you have the right browser and it has the proper settings, they need some upgrading to be of use to a larger number of users. This book is great as I start transforming those sites.

The title says it all; this book is absolutely fantastic! Dan Cederholm just gets it! I have been a Web designer/developer for 6 years; during this time I have seen *the Web* go through many changes. I discovered Dan several years back and realized he always seems to be on top of these changes.

The basic break down of the book; Dan chooses one Web component (be that text, navigation, boxes, etc.) from a typical Web site and deconstructs it. He then re-builds this component using XHTML and CSS, creating a faster-loading site that is accessible to all users. By the end of this book you will have a solid foundation for building flexible and accessible sites.

I highly recommend it, you won't be disappointed!

An amazing publication, Dan Cedorholm takes CSS and explains it the way that most designers will understand. The aesthetic layout and technical writing coincide well together. This text gives CSS the visual heirarchy that explains it in a pliable manner that no book that I have found has yet to do...Highly suggest.

The book is very well written for me. I know enough CSS and XHTML, but I get lost in the WHY to do certain things in certain places. The book has some great example websites built with tables, and then how the same site could be improved with XHTML and CSS. It is not a simple replace A with B. He takes you through each step, why he is doing it, and what the effect is in the browser.

I enjoyed it so much I read it all in a single day. And for the past 2 weeks have been going through and implementing his tactics on a new site I am building. It is very practicle advice to put into your sites today. It has definately helped my understanding of CSS in general, and even provides some good site design tips as well.

I highly recommend the book.

Book content is excellent, but be prepared for disappointment with the paperback cover. It is not glossy and unlikely to hold up to regular handling. Plan on covering it with something reinforcing. In fact, the cover on my book also started curling within hours of unpacking it, before I even did more than flip through it.

New Riders is not the only publisher who seems unable to put a good cover on a paperback, but it mystifies me as to why that is, since so many publishers have no trouble with that aspect of book design.

This book/author is simply fabulous in its capability to provide an almost componentized approach to the presentation layer of a website. It demonstrates how to build flexible and fast-loading web pages by minimizing the amount of markup code/html. Further, by abstracting much of the presentation code, using medium to advanced level CSS, economies of scope and scale could be had through reuse of the remarkable and substantive techniques presented in the text. Great Work!

I'm working with web standards for almost three years and my decision to buy this book is to help me explain web standards to my colleagues and coworkers in a effective manner.

Cederholm wrote in a objective way and the illustrations are fantastic.

I fully recommend it.

After Googling my way to SimpleBits, I discovered that I had not only found a great blog, but a great resource for all things Web design. This book was the first investment to enlighten myself in the ways of XHTML, CSS, and Web standards, and I was definitely not disappointed.

Just cracking the book open is inspiring; initially leafing through it, the book seemed more like a catalog than an instructional book on Web page development and design. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be buying stuff in this thing or learning from it. After digging in, I found that Dan breaks things down in a nice structured format; the screen shots and images really help out with the flow of the material he presents.

Every chapter provides a run-through of an example page/site that is not bulletproof, why this is so, and then proceeds to slice and dice: carving and sculpting like Edward Scissorhands on a fat Thanksgiving Day turkey, Cederholm reintroduces it, serving up a nice platter o' standards-based, lean and mean XHTML and CSS code. As if that wasn't enough, now he's even got some wine to help wash it all down.

I knew nothing of Web standards - nor the inroads and advantages of CSS and XHTML - before embarking upon the updated PodShop.com adventure. This book is like having a master there to help you every step of the way, from the beginning chapter talking about flexible text, straight through to the end where everything is put together in a sample site trafficking pretzels.

This book is a must have.

I've been a webmaster/designer responsible for 4 sites since 2001. I don't do this as a business, but these are sites FOR businesses and they have to look professional, so I need to stay abreast of the technology--not easy in this ever-changing field. I've been using CSS, but not to their fullest and I've been frustrated in my attempts to upgrade my sites, finding myself going back to nested tables to keep things from "breaking apart" when my back was turned. This, however, makes what was previously GREEK absolutely clear. I'm only on the 3rd chapter, but I can already tell that this is EXACTLY the book I've been waiting for: no more eyes glazed over--things are absolutely clear. By looking at the examples that are "not right" and how to fix them, I'm making lists of what I plan to do on my sites just as soon as I finish that last chapter. Best money I've spent in a long time!!!

If you are looking for clear, concise, working examples of CSS then this is the book for you. The first night I got the book I took three tips from the book and added them to my current project. The advice is clear, well thought out and very well written. Highly recommended. If you work in CSS or want to see why CSS is worth the bother then get this book.

This book should be proprietary reading for each web developer, web designer, project manager, web master M/F.
This is - apart from Zeldman - the first book on the subject that I read front to back in 1 day. For day 2, just download the sample files, and start experimenting. At the end of the day you'll have a clean website up and running.
With winter on it's way, it's a great weekend project idea or just ask Santa.

I'm looking forward to the sequel of the book!

This is a great book. It's far more useful than most of the 500-page CSS tomes out there with the 200 page appendix listing every property under the sun.

The book is arranged in a deceptively simple way: each chapter has a seemingly simple goal, such as "Creative Floats."

But the sum is larger than the parts: I've often found myself using the book as a reference in lieu of some other more "comprehensive" book, because I remember how all the parts fit together.

If you've been battling with the slew of CSS hacks floating around on the web (I sure have!), then I can't recommend this book enough. Simple, practical solutions to the kinds of problems you actually care about when doing web design.

This is definitely one of the most useful books I've found on CSS and XHTML. I liked the author's mantra of keeping the content separate from the design and going for maximum flexiblity. Great examples and very easy to follow steps. Each chapter concentrates on a specific aspect of web page design, with the last chapter sort of tying it all together. I only wish the book was longer - maybe Cederholm will write a Vol 2 with more. One aside - after reading this (and others) and noting all the various issues with the Internet Explorer browser (i.e. how much stuff it gets wrong), it makes you wonder if any of the folks at Microsoft would even admit in public to having worked on the IE 5 or 6 projects...

This book has a lot of good reccommendations for modern use of stylesheets. I really enjoyed the author's style, presenting the A B C apporach of solving a problem and explaining the strengths & weaknesses of each approach. There needs to be more books like this one on the subject. This is a very good buy for anybody into web design or css design.

Having previously completed reading Simon Collison's excellent "Beginning CSS", it was refreshing to jump into a book that I could get through fairly quickly (no offense, Simon).

The most valuable thing I learned from this book: It showed me how easy it is to throw a CSS "hook" (Unique identifier in the HTML that tells the browser where to apply the rules defined in your style sheet) onto pretty much anything in my HTML/XHTML, so it really freed up my thinking with regards to the flexibility of CSS.

Anyone with at least a beginners knowledge of Photoshop, Fireworks or similar program will not have a problem making their own graphics for each exercise. For those who either don't wish to or cannot create their own graphics, there was a zip file containing all the code and images on the author's personal site but at the time of this writing I cannot seem to find it. [At the time of this review the book's publisher, New Riders, doesn't have a place for folks to get at it either.]

I would recommend that anyone new to CSS should read a book that spoon-feeds you the basics before reading this one. At the proper stage of development, however, this book is an excellent stepping stone and deserves a place on your reading list and book shelf.

As long as I've been working with the web, I haven't found a book with such a long shelf life as this one. As stated in other reviews, this is one of the few books I turn to regularly - especially since I'm more on the functional/internal workings/content side of things and struggle with design at times. To say this book is useful is an understatement. I just wish I had the only copy, so I'd be one step ahead of the rest.

Very well written and accessible book on not only why we should code with XHTML and CSS but how. Probably not for the beginning coder but if you have some experience with HTML/CSS, you should be able to follow the examples easily and be on your way to developing simpler, more accessible sites. Highly recommended.

Dan Cederolm's BULLETPROOF WEB DESIGN goes beyond visual appeal, telling how to build a web site adaptable to a range of situations to reach the widest possible audience. These dual focuses contribute to chapters which outlines strategies for building lasting designs which are flexible, readable, and use-controlled. BULLETPROOF WEB DESIGN does more than 'tell': it 'shows' through a series of before-and-after examples which take 'unbulletproof' designs and transforms them through make-overs using XHTML and CSS. Recommended for web builders who know code and aren't afraid to use it.

This book is a fantastic resource for web designers and developers. It presents easy to read and follow real world examples of why you should be using CSS to design and develop your pages.

No more than a day went by after I got the book and I was already using and implementing the suggestions and code and "solving" problems on my client sites.

One big blunder though (and why I gave it four stars): where's page 196? page 195 is included twice...

Small price to pay though for such a valuable resource. I immediately bought Dan's other book and found it just as valuable. You can't go wrong with this if you are serious about web design and development.

Simple, clever, elegant solutions. This book is a nice short read (I took my time and read it in less than a weekend). Reader should be reasonably versed in the topic. It's not for absolute beginners. But there's no rocket science here either. Many of the concepts are familiar. It's all sound advice assembled in a smart sequence. Stands as a classic on it's own. Also makes an excellent follow up or compliment to Cederholm's "Web Standards Solutions." The Author's style is conversational, pleasant and never condescending. Very well done.

I wish all books were written by an author that is as clear and concise as Dan. If you are new to CSS, this will give you a great foundation. If you have some experience already, then this will continue to keep you going on great mark-up and styling.

Dan has kept the code simple. It is a daughting task to script modern web sites so that the code is "lean" and the "message" gets deliverd across a range of web browsers. Dan has shown the way. I recommend this book to all who write code for web sites. His approach certainly helped me.

When I first saw this book I wondered just why I should go look at yet another book on changing the way I've been doing things. It took about two pages in chapter one before I understood what he was saying.

He uses as an example a sight that sells eyeglasses. Then he says, people shopping for eye glasses might need to expand the font size being displayed by their browser. That made good sense. Then he showed how a common programming technique would prevent the user from doing that. That makes good sense. Why would you want to do anything that could cause him to move away?

He then discusses how the possible fixes would be handled by various browsers including a different image shown by IE version 5 and IE version 6.

Going just through the first chapter I learned a lot that I hadn't seen anywhere else. Then the rest of the chapters taught me even more.

This fellow knows what he is talking about. This isn't a book for the absolute beginner, it's aimed at the intermediate level user who understands what HTML is all about and has at least some knowledge of CSS and XHTML. Highly recommended.

If you're a frontend engineer who's already skilled in web standards (semantic markup, CSS presentation, unobtrusive javascript), this book may help you to the next level. If you're new to that stuff, then I recommend Head First HTML With CSS and XHTML.

This book is simply essential for the serious web developer who cares about standards and web sites that just work. It is well presented and thorough. The knowledge it imparts is readily extended to new design challenges. Well done!

I don't use to thoroughly read professional books from start to end. I rather browse them for solutions to specific problems I encounter.

Well, in this case I've broken my habits, because from the very moment that "Bulletproof Web Design" reached my hands, I made it my bedside (or better, my "bus-seat") book and I'm about to finish it already.

Dan Cederholm just covers 8 (+1) aspects of designing with web standards, but he does it so well and so easy to read and understand, that you learn much more about the foundations of CSS than what the chapters announce.

Congratulations, Dan. And thanks a lot.

I like the style that the book was written in and the building approach to a final piece of code. Too often books will take fragment pieces of code to describe several different functions and then lets the reader tie all of the pieces together. Okay for someone who is knowledgable but a nightmere for a person new to web design. This book assumes that you have prior knowledge of XHTML and web design. Being new to this language I did not understand many of the issues described in the book. One point that did come out loud and clear is that the industry desparately needs a set of standards that everyone adheres to.

It appeared that the main issue the book was trying to resolve was that of the visually impaired. While this is important the focus should be on general web design. Also, while the examples started off great and very well presented too many off shoots were addressed like shading of blocks, rounded corners for boxes, etc. These items make for great looking web designs but they should be discussed in a separate book as this took away from the main topic that was being addressed.

This is my first attempt at writing code for a web design and I must admit I find CSS difficult to learn. Bullet Proof Web Designs helped clear some things up but there still are many lines of code that don't work the way I thought they would so I continue to search for additional resources that presents a clearer path to good CSS web design. However, that's probably why I'm called a beginner.

Someone was complaining that he couldn't find the code for this book elsewhere. I happen to find the code for this book based on the filename of the zip file that was mentioned here. Grab it before it is gone!!!

[...]

Great resource for css designers. I particularly enjoyed the section on rounded corners and css without tables. But I did find one thing wrong with it--page 196 is missing from my copy. What happened?

Got this one a while ago and Amazon e-mailed me the typical "Write a review" just recently. Oh well, here's my two cents...

Not a complete guide on XHTML and CSS, but I'll keep it. It's a good primer on the world of CSS hacks and using creative ways to incorporate CSS. Good for those that want more than the raw rules of CSS.

The book has great examples that give parallels between how web pages are typically developed, with bloated "table" based HTML, and how they can be developed in ways that make them faster loading, highly accessible, and cross-browser friendly.

Keep it for reference and for supplementing your current XHTML/CSS templates. All web sites referenced in the book are a "must bookmark" for further inspiration.

This is the first technical book I ever read cover to cover and couldn't wait to get to the computer to try out the many things I learned. I thought I knew CSS, but I didn't know half the things the author explains, with excellent examples -- all of which can be downloaded. He has the correct attitude toward web site design and proceeds to illustrate putting it into practice.

The book is very well written and amply illustrated.

If you want to build a standards-compliant, flexible Website, buy this book. It's not necessarily for someone just getting started with CSS- you will probably be a bit lost without the basics down first, but once you have built at least one CSS based Website you will learn a lot from this book.

I am also a big fan of Dan Cederholm's other book, 'Web Standards Solutions'. If you are new to CSS, you should probably read that one first as it is a bit more on the introductory level.

So why only four stars? This book contains a huge error: page 195 is included twice and 196 is missing. Yes, I am sure it is missing because figure 8.10 is never shown in my copy of the book (pg. 195 references 8.9 and pg. 197 references 8.11). Hard to believe such a large error could not have been caught. I pre-ordered my copy so hopefully, for those of you shopping now, that error has been corrected. Without that error, I would definitely rate this book with 5 stars.

There's been plenty of good books published in the last 2-3 years about standards-based web design. This latest book by Dan Cederholm stands out from the crowd, with both solid techniques and impeccable presentation.

"Bulletproof Web Design" is packed with valuable layout and typography techniques. There's not a bit of fluff in this book! These design techniques rely upon a minimum of hackery, and produce truly sharp-looking, accessible, and true-to-standards results.

This book reflects the author's amazing attention to detail. The examples are carefully built with excellent graphic examples and clearly written code. New Riders should be commended for giving this book top-notch production values, with excellent paper & printing, as well as meticulous editing.

Any web designer, whether learning CSS anew, or an old hand looking for more reliable techniques, will greatly benefit from this book--and will want to put it on their most-valuable reference shelf along with such essential works as Meyer's "Cascading Style Sheets" and Zeldman's "Designing With Web Standards".

This book is exactly what I was looking for. Instead of giving you fish, it well... it gives you some, but it teaches you to fish as well. This book, unlike other HTML/CSS books I looked at, gives you *direction*, helps to understand why certain things are better be done a certain way.

Using software programming as analogy, this book does not teach you C programming, like loops, variables and pointers, but rather shows you examples of elegant software designs, with bits of C langauge here and there.

It is very short and easy (very easy) to read, but somehow it finally twisted my mind, and "HTML generation" process is more fluent and natural (and less annoying) now.

overall this book is awesome, well written, with good common use info.
i think that it needs an introductory chapter though, for those who don't really know CSS yet but are buying popular books to learn.

I liked this book which helped me to understand the issues around rendering with stylesheets and XHTML. This is not helpful enough as the CSS and XHTML are rendered through JSPs and ASPs. The book falls short on explaining them and how these issues can be resolved at the web application level. If you are a JSP or J2EE developer involved with Web development, then you need to read "Core Security Patterns by Christopher Steel" that narrates the tricks, techniques and strategies for designing secure web applications.

This book continues what Dan started in Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook. Absolutely fabulous. Recommended.

In addition, I consider the layout, graphics, and publishing of this book a work of art worthy of hanging in any modern museum.

Another sweet book from cederholm.

Great commitment to semantic markup and keeping the code clean.

I really like this book. It makes me totally convinced that I should use "bulletproof design" for my future work. The book does not teach the basic CSS and XHTML. However, you will get the inspiration to develop your skills after reading the very good examples, explanations and suggestions. It is also possible to use the solutions right away to improve your design. I recommend this book for those who wish to reach a professional web design level. Some of those who make their living as professional web designers would also benefit from reading this book.

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS by Dan Cederholm makes me long for a Dan Cederholm fan club to join. The book is clear, well-illustrated, easy to use and provides helpful information. It's landing high on my recommended list.

Cederholm's explanation of bulletproof is that pages are flexible enough to be readable in many circumstances. Bulletproof pages are based on Web standards, use sensible markup and separate presentation from content. He takes a component approach through most of the book, looking at a small section of a page such as scalable navigation or expandable rows. He examines the way it's commonly done, then suggests a cleaner and more flexible bulletproof way to accomplish the same thing. In the final chapter, he puts it all together in a complete page.

Many of his bulletproof solutions involve floats. He also uses several hacks. I'm not going to debate the merits of these choices. He explains his solutions and choices quite well in the book. His results are elegant and stand up to the bulletproof test, and he makes no claim that his choices are the only correct choices.

His solutions often involve clever use of two or more background images. (Cederholm was the originator of the faux columns concept published originally on A List Apart, an early and widely used solution to the problem of unequal columns based on floats.) He's the author of another influential book promoting standards, Web Standards Solutions, and owns the site Simple Bits.

Topics addressed include sizing text, scalable navigation, vertical expansion, float-based grids, flexible boxes, table styles, and fluid layouts. This book is a must have addition to your web design library.

Most of the solutions are very good but the "problems" behind quite a few of these are non-existing or not important at the most.
The rest of the subjects are OK and if you are prepared to skip about 1/3 of the book I can recommend it.

I have been a so-called "table monkey" and have been longing to become a human being. So I picked up this book.

Throughout the text, the emphasis is placed in creating an XHTML/CSS page that does not break, when the user environment and/or the browser setting are not what the site designer expect or anticipated. At first I was a little skeptical of the author's rather strict adherence to the design that does not break in situations such as, say, a user uses a very large font setting for better readability; such a consideration may be of little importance nowadays, since even Firefox 3 now "zooms" in and out the entire page contents by default, not just text fonts. Furthermore, for many web developers under pressure to produce web sites that just work "well enough" for most reasonable cases, it does seem like the practices that are recommended in this book seem to take a little more care and time than desired.

However, all the design ideas presented in this book are very well thought out, and it actually does not take much extra effort to implement, once a designer gets used to them. I am in the process of updating my web design skills from what I knew as a table monkey, and I assure that this book offers plenty of enlightenment to those in similar situations as I am. Good thing is that once I learned the techniques presented in the book, I can come up with other effective ways to use CSS to fine tune layouts. Using HTML tables still offer some advantage if you need to support older nonstandard-compliant (Microsoft) browsers, but the flexibility of CSS just cannot be beaten if the site designs require extreme attention to detail.

The only drawback is that the presentation of the XHTML/CSS codes is slightly too meticulous and verbose for someone who is already very proficient in reading them. It is also not a cheap book for the amount of contents. Highly recommended, especially considering that the good CSS support in most modern browsers has started allow us to transform ourselves from table supermonkeys to CSS subhuman.

I am very skeptical about the value of IT related books. Having been in the industry for 17 years I have read very few that deliver what I am looking for and instead have tended to rely upon articles from disparate sources across the web.

There are of course exceptions - and this book is a shining example of how to make a subject understandable for many levels of experience AND be of value to all.

If you are interested in making your site CSS friendly, want to unravel what all the various things mean, or have a working knowledge of CSS and want to go beyond what most average developers know about CSS then I would strongly recommend buying this book. It won't solve world hunger, but it will solve many of your CSS questions and designs.

The second edition of Bulletproof Web Design is as good as the first, but keeps it current with IE7 and the ever-changing techniques CSS professionals use. The book is written in a voice anyone can understand, and is filled with techniques pros use. The lessons don't go that deep, but there is little here that anyone who writes CSS for a living will disagree with. I was surprised that he still talked about adding hacks to your CSS to feed special values to different versions of IE, but in the last chapter 'Putting It All Together' he used external hack sheets for different versions of IE brought in with IE conditional comments, so all was forgiven. I would recommend this book to anyone who desires to improve the way that they write CSS.

A good tech book is one I can take with me on the train, read it, gain something, and then try out the technique once I get to the office. In other words, it lets me perform experiments in my mind and then try them for real later. Too many tech books fail to logically walk me through a process and instead either (a) rely too heavily on complex examples that must be done on a computer or (b) regurgitate existing documentation.

_Bulletproof Web Design_ avoids both traps, instead making a case for accessible design and then explaining - in easy-to-understand chunks - how to do it.

To put it another way, very few books in this genre succeed in changing the way I approach something. This one does.

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS

This is one of the best CSS books I have read. Author demonstrated how to make the sites bulletproof on desirable features like adjustable text, scalable navigation, expandable rows, and sizable boxes. Unlike other CSS books, author demonstrated standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control with useful code examples, ample illustrations, and clear explanations. This book changes the way on how we treat CSS and HTML from the old traditional concept to the cutting-edge practice in any modern browsers, yet making successful sites degrade gracefully in any browsers. This is a good reference book I would keep using and reading repeatedly. This is excellent classroom book for CSS beginners to build strong foundation or advance professionals to push their skills to the next level.

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

I hope knocking down to 4 stars doesnt hinder people from buying this book, it is fantastic and should be in every web designer's library. Its concise, filled with well-explained and well-illustrated CSS strategies. The author's writing is one of the best I've ever seen in a technical book. Fun to follow and a great sense of humor, but very clear about what he's teaching.

I knock it down a star for two reasons, one it does focus a bit too much on people with screen readers. I know this sounds awful to say, but before I get crucified let me explain: as a designer my medium is mainly visual. While I do think it is important to keep your audience in mind for general public sites, I think for a design book the visual should be a bigger focus only because as designers we are trying to "wow" clients visually.

The other knock is that it is fairly small for a list price of $39.99 but price is an issue I have with most computer books. I would've maybe also like to see a chapter or two of random Tips & Tricks. Stuff like making text look weather-beaten by putting a GIF of "splotches" over it that I recently saw online. Maybe that's too gimmicky for this book, but you get the idea.

Despite the knocks this is a must-have CSS book and should be a definite purchase for all web designers out there. One of those you will come back to over and over.

This is a must read. There are so many great ideas for building scalable pages. It's also written in a style that ANYONE can relate to even for people who are relatively new to XHTML/CSS. This book makes a great companion to "Stylin' with CSS" by Charles Wyke-Smith. It fun too.

One of very few technical books I could not put down. I devoured it from cover to cover. Packed with practical, extremely useful information.

This book is an easy read and has a lot of great tips on enhancing code.

El libro se enfoca más en conceptos aunque abstractos, importantes y bien ejemplificados sobre el porqué un diseño debe de ser a prueba de balas. El código es limpio, sencillo y dan la base a conceptos muy puntuales que son pilares para un desarrollo web portable, compatible y optimo. Sin embargo, no profundiza mucho sobre el CSS como lenguaje, y variaciones a algunos ejemplos presentados hacen que se deba buscar el porque de repente ya no funcionan. Lo recomiendo como un buen libro para formarse un criterio solido sobre diseño web.

It is a very good choice of purchase. it proves to be an easy read and can be understood by even a beginner.

Jeżeli znasz CSS2 i chcesz sie nauczyć jak korzystać z tej wiedzy w praktyce, to jest to b. dobra książka. Zawiera sporo myków, które powodują, że strony są elastyczne i dostępne.
Jeżeli nie znasz CSS, to książka ta nie nauczy cię tego.

Ważną rzeczą jest jakośc wydania - po prostu rewelacja! Aż się chce w tę ksiązkę patrzeć!

Polecam wszystkim.

While it's true that the information in this book can be found in numerous web sites like alistapart.com and the author's own site simplebits.com, it's good to have all the neat tips and tricks in one nice package. The book is straight forward, to the point, and a quick read. The full-color illustrations and examples are clear and easy to follow. I was able to immediately put to use the information I learned from this book.

The only thing I have to do differently from the book's recommendation is to use percentage-based font-size instead of the keywords such as "small" in the CSS. My web site visitors complain that either the fonts are too small or too large to read (they have their default text zoom set to smaller or larger). This is a problem in IE6 for PC, and once I switched to font-size: 90%, it looked more consistent across the board, and increasing font size in the IE browser actually works.

For those facing the annoyance of writing HTML on a regular basis, CSS has been full promise but has failed to deliver for years because many browsers will not interpret it consistently. This book gives you those hacks needed to position items on the page with CSS for all browsers. Now you can write just one set of code that will also work for PDAs and 56K dial-ups. The simplified code will make dynamic pages a snap. Say good-bye and good riddance to spacer.gif and embedded tables.

This book opened my eyes to CSS for the first time and once I had finished it I was able to understand and use CSS and XHTML to help inprove the flexibility of our companies websites. I would recommend this to anyone that is in the market to start desiging flexible and clean websites. Highly recommended!!

The book itself is a pleasure to look at and work with: it's nicely designed and in color. The examples are excellent, the writing is clear and enjoyable to read, and there are very few typos. Dan Cederholm demonstrates what excellent results a good designer can achieve when he or she is willing to master some code.

This is not a book for absolute beginners, in my opinion. I think you'll get a lot more out of the tutorials in Bulletproof Web Design after you've worked through a basic book on CSS.

Great book. Well written and concise without skimping on the necessary information. Highly recommended!

This book is a must-have. Even advanced CSS gurus will benefit from the techniques outlined. Real-world examples are used to explain how the usual ways of doing things can be improved and made "bulletproof". Let your web text be resized for low-vision users without having the layout fall to pieces - bulletproofing is your key to doing this, and a lot more.

This is the simplest technical book I have ever read. The examples are current, the detail is impeccable and the physical presentation of this book is immaculate. Truly stunning on how Dan executed this book.

'Bulletproof Design' communicates real examples of web standard solutions in the present year of 2005... period.

In all, I enjoyed this book just as much as Dan's last book, 'Web Standard Solutions'. There is no shame in Dan's abilities; hopefully his ability can some how teleport p196 ;).

Like Dan's first book, Web Standards Solutions, Bulletproof Web Design is a tasty mix of theory and practice. As a working designer/producer, he understands the pitfalls in browsers' implementations of CSS and tells you how to work around them. Anyone working with CSS (and that should be everyone) will have run up against the problems he discusses, but not everyone will discover the solutions and techniques on their own (at least, not without a lot of head banging). The book is not just about bugs, of course -- it teaches standard good practices for creating effective web pages. Dan covers all the issues that confront us in building pages with CSS -- layout, styling, usability, cool tricks -- and he covers them in good depth and in a way that allows you to extract information quickly. And he's very readable. Many lights will go on when you read this book. Don't hesitate to buy it.

While we're on the subject, CSS fans, you'll want to check out another new and comprehensive book, Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design. A thicker tome than Bulletproof, it's authored by five web luminaries who also share techniques by discussing real-world projects that they've built. CSS is mature enough and powerful enough to give tremendous creative possibilities to its practitioners, but buggily-enough implemented that you need guidebooks like these to make good use of it.

The Zen of CSS Design is the third recent book you will need for your library (and studio). It's comprised of case studies of pages on the CSS Zen Garden site (csszengarden.com). Like the other books, it is filled with tips and techniques that will take your work to another level.

And for those who are new to all this, read everything by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer you can get your hands on.

I've been working with webstandards for quite some time, but maybe "cheating" a bit with regard to more flexible or "bulletproof" designs. This book is full of solutions for that problem! Even better than Cederholms first book, "Web standards solutions", which I also highly recommend! Really inspiring! Go get it!

I knew little CSS but this book actually helped me get started, which I thought was good for such an advanced book.
• There's also a helpful reference section in the back.
But actually implementing one of the bullet proof schemes is tough—at least for a begginer.

I recommend this book to others frequently. The tutorials are easy to follow and cover a lot of everyday situations. Should be used in classrooms...

I highly recommend this book, regardless of how much experience you have, most readers will pickup a few new techniques after reading the book. Many of the concepts will help a web designer make lighter websites and better css styles. The book is a quick read for most people, and the advice is very practical.

Excellent book, brings up a lot of good accessibility and best practice points. This will make me a better web developer.

Dan Cederholm runs down a list of tips and tricks where he teaches us how to protect our design in worst case scenarios, it's definitely not an entry level book and a great source of techniques. Recommended reading.

Some useful tips on creating good semantic markup. However, the author tends to build his case for this markup by citing tables on a lot of examples and the arguments to switch to a DIV structure. In some ways, I found this amusing as most of us know the benefits of table-less designs. The book reads more like a story telling similar to many technical analysis stock chart books I read based on past hindsight that no longer is relevant.

I bought this primarily to read about the indestructible box example. But I have to say after reading this that the markup is too narrow in scope. Not every box is going to have a DIV followed by an heading tag to create the rounded corners. Not only that but it was a fixed width example too so how can this be "bullet proof". Rather, the author should have come up with a generic solution so that the box can be sized width wise and lengthwise. Many people use a CMS and the markup to create a box is different.

All in all though its a good book to follow along to see how one goes about doing actual design in CSS. There's very few books out there like this that teach design while taking a hands on approach.

This is easily the best CSS book I have ever owned. It's very easy to read and provides excellent, and sadly few, examples. Most importantly, the author does a wonderful job helping the reader understand concepts and how and why certain things are implemented.

Other books are FULL of examples... although they usually lack the details that someone like me need. The details, writing, and illustrations make this book much more attractive. Sure, Bulletproof Web Design isn't the end-all of books of this nature. It's short. You'll need more books. But any serious developer needs to read this book.

If you like "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, then you'll adore this one as well.

I purchased this book in the hopes it would have fixed my floating issues. It did, to a point. A couple of the examples didn't work well with Firefox. I found this book was helpful to fix a few things, but I did find that I was able to find other fixes online. I still enjoy this book, I just wish it worked better with Firefox browsers.

This book is very readable, and the examples are presented in building block style, step by step. Practical benefits of XHTML and CSS are provided, and the code needed for the samples to work in the major browsers. I highly recommend the book!

This book is great. Sets you up with examples of web sites that real world major companies have created, and will walk you through a better way to do specific parts of the site.

I found this to provide an excellent foundation for developing web pages using lean HTML and elegant CSS. It was not overly focused on Web Design or Web Development, but comfortably in the middle. The examples were progressive, practical, and timeless. In addition, the final chapter brought it all together nicely to make a full web page from scratch.

This book really is 5 stars! I gave it 4 stars only because I wanted more examples and, as a developer, I would have preferred more code.

Nonetheless, an excellent guide into the next generation of web development. Something I will reference again and wish I had read years ago!

This is my first time buying a CSS book. I was just using basic CSS before, but with this book I can definitely design much better. I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn CSS. The writer makes learning CSS very easy.

Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cerderholm is an excellent example of how any instructional book should be written. It doesn't read like a text book and has refreshing polished look and feel. Fit and finish aside, the book guides by example, and provides a wealth of information for readers of all skill levels. Each section takes a traditional solution and shows several ways to accomplish it, as well as the pros and cons of each. It also stresses standard compliant methods that are compact and supported by all the major browsers.

The only shortcoming was that it leaves out some of the advanced CSS techniques that remain a mystery to most, such as true vertical alignment, the kind you would find by using a table. Aside from that all I can hope for is a second book that tackles more advanced issues.

Pros:
- Very well written and formatted
- Loaded with real world examples
- Color illustrations
- Uses compact and widely supported methods
- Great for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Excellent for learning semantic markup
- Downloadable examples from the author's website

Cons:
- Leaves out some sought after CSS solutions and advanced techniques

Excellent book for any web designer guru who wants to know about CSS techniques. I could use this book and apply it on my work right away.

Good Job, Dan!

Can't wait for your next book.

This is a great book for anyone interested in standards-based web site design. It's an easy read and does a good job of explaining how to design flexible web sites that will allow you/your client to reach the largest audience possible.

Being a designer at heart, I also have to say that the book has a nice layout and I love the use of color!

No More Tables!

I use this book at home and at work. It has helped me immensely in taking my designs to the next level.

I would recommend this book to anyone the least bit interested in CSS design

Looks like I'm a little late to the party, as over 30 reviewers have already given an enthusiastic thumbs up for this book. I already owned Dan's other book on Web Standards Solutions and found it one of the most helpful books I had read on the subject. So when I saw this one, I knew I had to have it.

I'm a part-time designer who needs to make his research moments count, and I can honestly say that reading this book has been an excellent investment.

Everything that can be said about the book has already been said by other reviewers so I won't waste your time with mere repetition. The only thing I will say is that it is not for total beginners--Dan expects you to know a little about CSS when you pick up his book.

Unlike the reviewer from Norway, I have not visited Dan's web sites, so I was not disappointed by finding old material in this book.

Although I haven't read through the entire book, first glance seems to be quite impressive. I look forward to gleaning information to help me with my future Web consulting.

After being a year long reader of the blog I dont quite know what I was expecting but it wasn't this, Its a good book, well written and if your just getting into CSS then its an excellent way of getting started

I already knew most of the points that were getting across, and it highlighted a few things that were very new. But I can't say I rushed out re-coded anything as a result.

Great book, I'm the wrong audience, if your getting into CSS and want to learn then buy it I envisage you'll be having post-its in certain pages for a while to come.

I was very impressed with this book. It is one of the simplest, easiest to understand computer technology books. I am relatively new to CSS and I learned so much from this book. But the most important thing is that it is very much up-to-date when it concerns CSS and web standards.

I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about web design/development.

Dan Cederholm has written a very easy to follow book that teaches us how to use common sense methods to allow your websites the most flexibility when dealing with different browsers and custom user defined settings.

Most of what he teaches are things you may have already known about, but may not have thought to use in this particular way. I can't say enough about this book. Please note that this book is not intended to be a book to teach you step by step what each XHTML/CSS code does, but shows you how they can be used to expand your website so they do not break apart when something unexpected might happen. If you are unsure as to what some of the CSS code is, you might want to have a quick reference guide by your side so that you can follow along.