Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design (VOICES)

• #15 in Best Cascading Style Sheets Books

74 Reviews

Sort by: Most Helpful ▲ Date Rating

The problem with CSS books is that they always take two tracks: They're either a rote reference of the specification, or they're random "projects" that the author either thinks are interesting or, more likely, just happened to complete himself at work, so he feels qualified to write about it. Eric Meyer on CSS is the latter, and it suffers greatly for it, especially if you don't just happen to need exactly the kind of site he likes to create. Which, quite frankly, are unexciting, especially when you consider some of the impressive CSS on the Web today. But the big problem is that core CSS topics are only mentioned--often in passing--when they solve a problem for a project. You'll get no run-down of the importance between various positioning styles, for example, until the CSS he uses throughout the whole book suddenly doesn't work and he has to try something different. Don't get me wrong, this book isn't worthless, but everyone here is acting like this book is a cure-all, and it's not. If you want to master CSS, you will still need several books, none of which are perfect.

Like many others, I bought the book based on on-line raves. I thought it was great at first but now the blush is off the rose. The book IS a more informative and user-friendly intro to CSS than the others I have (many are "look what I made, mommy" books by designers...nice visuals but not the best learning tool). Some of the lessons were a struggle so, fortunately, there were the free tutorials from w3schools.com to help with the rough spots.....never thought of myself as a slow learner until now.

Then, just when you think CSS will answer all your prayers, you get seriously gored by the infamous NN4 incompatibilities and then IE problems crop up.

What this and every other book lacks is a decent chart reference which shows browser incompatibilities like the great cheat sheet programming cards from visibone.com BUT, I shouldn't have to buy this kind of critical tool, it oughta be a pullout or be in the appendix.

Until a better book comes out, prospective buyers should go ahead and get this one PLUS Meyers Programmers Reference (ISBN #0072131780). Round it out the Visibone cheat sheets for quick reference and to keep those nasty NN4 and IE4 nightmares from giving you an ulcer. Between all this stuff and the W3C School site (PS:which also has HTML and CSS validator links and other very cool stuff), even I was able to master CSS...but it takes more books and programmer's aids.

Eric Meyer has shown once again that he can provide exactly what the industry needs at the time that it is needed. Now that CSS is working similarly for the most part in the top 3 browsers, this book comes with perfect timing.

Meyer's previous books, such as "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide", were great. I still have several photocopied pages of that book taped up around my monitor (like the complete box model from chapter 8). I raved about "CSS 2.0 Programmer's Reference" when it came out; it was exactly what was needed for a DHTML programmer.

This new book, however, truly brings CSS to the masses. I really like the slick, color pages used by the publisher, New Riders. I think this is finally the book that will make CSS so accessible that it will become what it was intended to be: the norm.

"Eric Meyer on CSS" does an excellent job of drawing parallels between CSS syntax and HTML. The book presents realistic situations in a project-oriented approach. The code is broken down into step-by-step bites that really remind me of the Sams "Teach Yourself in 24 Hours" books. But make no mistake: this book is useful for advanced users, too. One can never have access to too many tips & tricks!

My first experience with Cascading Style Sheets came as a challenge from a 17 year old who in 1997 said "get on the bandwagon, gramps" and start writing CSS. So I opened up Notepad and started writing CSS, afterwards looking at it in Internet Explorer 3.0. That was the summer of 1997, and I was 29 years-old. My previous experience writing RTF-based Help told me this was exactly what HTML needed. But extensive use of CSS seemed slow to catch fire.

In 1997-1999 I was using CSS in an ideal setting: on a company intranet where all users were using at least IE 4.01. But as I moved on to other web sites during the "dot-com" craze, I found that my use of CSS would be limited due to varied browser usage throughout the World Wide Web.

We're now at a point with IE6/NN6 (and Opera, too) where widespread use of CSS--and advanced CSS at that--is possible. "Eric Meyer on CSS" is going to be an important tool in making that happen. Do yourself a favor and learn all of the CSS syntax you can from this book instead of relying only on a point-and-click GUI. There are excellent tools available, such as TopStyle, but these tools are no replacement for "mastering the language of web design", as noted on this book's cover.

Unlike most of the CSS books floating around out there currently, "Eric Meyer on CSS" gives you practical projects to work through, and apply CSS to, talking you through the whys and wherefores all the way. It takes you all the way from transforming an existing HTML table-based layout into a more streamlined structure using CSS, all the way up to bleeding edge design concepts that will be more and more feasible as the browsers catch up to web standards.

I would not recommend this book to someone who has absolutely no experience or knowledge of CSS (maybe check out the tutorials in your HTML editor, or look at some of the online tutorials at Webmonkey.com before diving into this book).

And, for intermediate users (you've been using stylesheets for awhile, maybe just to handle typography), I'd recommend also getting Eric Meyer's "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" for a more in-depth study of the CSS specs, though you can make it through most of the concepts presented here with just the information given with a little extra mental effort and perseverance.

The writing style is conversational and entertaining, and there are clear reasons given for everything. Meyers is definitely trying to teach you to fish rather than hand you a mackeral and send you on your way.

I really enjoyed that the book was in full color, and had a lot of visual aids -- New Riders is great for this.

If you're interested in the possibilities of web design using CSS, this book is well worth the price of admission.

To those reading the below reviews with less than 5 stars...DON"T BUY THEIR REVIEWS. They obviously are very uninformed when it comes to designing with web standards. I have to reply to the above (  
Eric J. Tischler) who referred to hand coding pages as "the web stone age". This is, in every sense of the word, BACKWARDS.

Although WYSIWIG editors are great time savers, they can never replace your BRAIN! Stop falling victim to the mindless "click and serve me" mentality and seperate yourself from the herd.

Learn what Mr. Meyer painstakingly offers in this book.

The power it will give you over layouts is immeasurable and CSS will be a vital part of the futre of web design as HTML4.0 will be relegated back down to where it belongs as structural markup only. HTML was not meant to be used for presentation, which CSS1 and CSS2 perform beautifully at.

thank you and good night! (try the fish!)

I've read one of Eric Meyer's other books about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets - The Definitive Guide) and loved it for its informative style and still use it occasionally as a reference. His latest book takes a different approach, not a reference book but more one that takes information about CSS and applies it here to real life examples, which makes it much easier for the average CSS author to learn and see how the CSS styles shown relate to what is being done on the site it affects. The book consists of 13 chapters or "projects," ranging from converting an existing page to CSS, to styling a press release or events calendar, to even creating your own online greeting card. There's a companion web site, which lets you download the files to be used with each project.

The book is wonderfully laid-out with lots of gorgeous color drawings and figures, which aid the reader in understanding each change. The step by step instructions are easy to follow and with each CSS code change or addition shown in red, also easy to understand and follow along with. I was amazed at the wide range of effects that can be done using CSS, as shown with each project.

This book is an excellent "tutorial" for those wishing to learn more about CSS.

As an avid reader of Eric Meyer's other books I was a bit hesitant at first: I usually work with references, and as a 'code warrior' I'd rather read the W3C specifications than a nice little article about how cool it is to colour a heading.

I was in for a surprise: The projects make it actually easier to see the connections between the theory and code on one side, and the results/web page on the other side.

Now I have a book that entices me with neat ideas - and the images that show me how it could look. Every project leads me step by step through the process of changing a bland pure HTML page into a CSS page, and how I could change and tweak it even further.

Make no mistake: this book is still full with code and theory, but Eric Meyer combines this with his typical writing style: concise, clear, to the point and with a certain lightness and wit that is in all of his writings.

This is not a book for beginners, but if you know about HTML and CSS and want to do more, learn new things and prepare for the future: that book was worth the wait.

I have been working my way through On CSS, and when I picked it up I thought I was very wise in the way of cascading style sheets. Mr. Meyers disabused me of that notion. He is an expert and by working through the examples you can really learn to make this system of styling sit up and bark. A note on the back cover says the book is for intermediate to advanced people, the note is correct. Don't buy this book if you are just trying to learn CSS at first. I think some of the disappointed buyers were too new at style sheets to get the expected benefit out of this book. Newbies would do well to investigate Elizabeth Castro's HTML For The World Wide Web by Peachpit Press and all the W3C.org tutorials out there before tackling a man like Meyers. But if you're ready for Eric, Eric is ready for you.

One thing you have to remember, play with the examples after you do them. Try to break them, and don't just follow along without understanding what you are doing. If you try to follow Meyers like a cookbook you will really let yourself down. This is a great learning tool, worth the time and money investments.

Another great feature of On CSS is something which you might think was a miserable drawback at first, but it turns out to be where you can get the most out of the book. The designs you end up with at the end of each chapter are C (Average) grade. Each one screams for a good designer to make them better. So when you finish each exercise, take the style sheet and turn a lackluster presentation into a Grade 1 design. Meyers invites you to play with the finished product at the end of each chapter, please do that---you earned it.

So, I would also say that if you are going to get Meyers' books, open up your wallet a little wider and get Robin Williams' book The Non-Designer's Design Book. I think of her as Meyer's big sister and the two go together like XHTML and CSS (or peaches and cream for you more lyrical folk). Robin Williams is an expert on teaching good design for layout and text (and images as well). Her book is ostensibly for text, but you will have all of the best design lessons you need to style up a remarkably svelte webpage if you do what Williams says with Meyers.

On CSS is a great addition to your understanding (as I am sure the second one is)--As Long As You Put In The Work And Go The Extra Mile.

P.S. Both the Williams and Castro books I recommended are under $20 each and will turn into reference books to keep and go back to often.

New Riders publishes nice looking books, but many of them, this one included, suffer from a lack of professional editorial oversight. A book that sells for $45.00 should be proofed a little more closely. The book's companion site lists dozens of editorial errors that should have been caught before the book went to press: [...]. After spending this much on a slim paperback volume, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour paging through the book, hand-correcting editorial errors that New Riders' editors should have caught in the first place.

Otherwise, Meyer's command of CSS is evident, but this is not the book that it could be. The presentation is hampered by its organization into "projects", and the reader must slog through details of Meyer's application of strategies in his own projects to find ideas that can be used elsewhere.

CSS is a great technology, but users are in need of something better organized, better presented, more comprehensive, and less crippled by rampant editorial gaffes.

"Eric Meyer on CSS" is one of the first and only books on CSS to take a real world and hands-on-teaching approach to CSS. You will learn CSS and how to apply it to real world situations, which helps to re-enforce what you are learning. This book will guide you through a series of well thought out projects that show you how CSS and can be used to solve problems. The book is in full-color, which makes it fun to read. Eric's writing style is very approachable and conversational, which makes you feel comfortable. His tips on browser bugs and gotchas are worth the price of the book alone!

You should have a solid understand of basic HTML and web design principles before you read this book. But once you are ready to learn CSS - make sure this is a book you don't pass up! In a market flooded with technical regurgitations and theoretical pontifications, it is so refreshing to see this kind of approach taken with a subject like CSS. There is just no better way to teach CSS!

As a fellow author and Web developer, reading this book was not only informative but very engaging and entertaining! This book should be part of every Web designer/developers curriculum. Do I have any complaints? Nope, I just wish there was MORE of it!

I can't understand why people are so attached to designing pages using code directly, rather than using the tools that have been created to automate much of that. You don't format a letter in your word processor using code, you click a button. You don't edit photos with code, you click a button. Publishers don't layout magazine pages or books using code, but Eric Meyer seems to think that web pages need to be done from scratch, meaning code. Its a colossal waste of time. This sort of thinking would have us all operating our computers from the command line for everything we do. That went out years ago. While this book may be great if you still live in the web stone age of code addicts, don't buy it if you want to design anything worth looking at. Do buy it if you want to spend five times as long creating your pages than you can in a wysiwyg editor that is capable with CSS, such as DW 2004 in design mode. I'm just glad I was able to sell my copy on Amazon.com for most of what I paid for it. Wake up to the modern age and forget books like this.

"Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design" is an instructional book written for those who have been disappointed with Web browser display results from using various brands of popular "drag & drop" website creation software.

The author, Eric Meyer, is an expert with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). By using CSS computer coding instructions, more precision can be brought to bear in a website layout. Top, bottom, and side-to-side distances between Web page objects can be better controlled with CSS commands rather then using just HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) code.

IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT DRAG & DROP
Seven years ago I purchased a thick book about HTML 2 and developed my first commercial website. The hand-coding involved not just the placement and formatting of text, it also required typing specific positioning instructions for the placement of the numerous JPEG images. It wasn't a precise exercise, and after going through this labor-intensive hand-coding process I anticipated with enthusiasm the development and arrival of drag & drop website development applications that would presumably end the need for typing code.

I purchased Adobe's PageMill drag & drop Web creation application when it was first available, but found myself frequently going to the HTML source code to make changes and better position the text and graphics elements. After PageMill, Adobe's GoLive proved a much better and more capable website creation product, and I believed the era of frequent involvement with typing HTML source code was behind me. However, some website layouts were not satisfactory enough when viewed in a browser. Spacing between text and images would sometimes be too wide or narrow. Reviewing the HTML source code would reveal nothing out of whack. So how to cure the problem? Cascading Style Sheets, as it turns out.

I've known about Cascading Style Sheets for a couple of years, but was unable to understand their real value from previous explanations I read. "Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design" solved the mystery for me. The knowledge and new skills I've gained from this book provided the learning breakthroughs I needed. I now get much better results positioning text and picture elements in a Web browser. Yes, it's back to some hand-coding, but I better understand and accept that CSS code is the best method for achieving the results I need and my clients require.

Helping the learning process are practice files for each of the thirteen chapters in this book that are downloaded from the website location provided by the author. Each tutorial file is identical to an example being explained in a particular chapter.

"Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design" is an excellent way to learn the creation of Cascading Style Sheets. There's only one improvement I can recommend for this book--spiral binding. With the typical glued binding I found myself needing weighted objects (including my elbow) to keep the book from slapping shut. Spiral binding would allow the pages to lay flat and make the process much easier with reading a paragraph and then performing the instructional tasks from the tutorial files while referring back to the book.

Tom Shackle is a multimedia producer and a member of the Alaskan Apple Users Group.

Eric Meyer is the acknowledged master of CSS, the new styling mechanism for the Web. His newest book, which completes a CSS book trilogy, reflects this vast experience. On the surface this book is a collection of 13 redesign projects, each illustrating different aspects of CSS layout techniques and HTML. Underneath is a philosophy, a way of thinking, and a collection of ideas. The book makes CSS look relatively easy, when in fact it's not.

The projects illustrate (in full color) how to rework existing designs in CSS, from the simple to the sublime. As you're reading the book, you get the feeling Meyer isn't fighting the medium, he's working with it in almost a Zen-like way. Tables can stay and be styled or go, it doesn't seem to matter to him.

Meyer works within browser bugs and limitations and shows a hack-free path through CSS layout and font styling techniques. Only in the last chapter, where he nearly recreates the layout of the book in CSS, does he resort to voice family hacks to work around browser bugs.

Each of the thirteen projects has the same basic framework. He strips example designs down to pure structural HTML and builds them back up, CSS layer by CSS layer until the design technique is recreated. Everything from hyperlink styles and menu skinning, print style sheets, forms, multicolumn layouts, fixing backgrounds, and recreating the book's own layout in CSS is covered, not an easy task.

Meyer's prose is also easy to take, peppered with pithy quotes and humorous headlines. The net effect feels like you are looking over his shoulder, watching and listening to him redesign web sites that will be "forward compatible" and made to last. Meyer makes learning CSS seem easy. As Jeffrey Zeldman wrote in the foreword, I don't know how he does it.

How can I say this simply? CSS, you can pick up by really (really) looking at other people's code and then doing it yourself (translate: open notepad and put in stuff like #box{margin:0 auto;width:466px;border:1px solid #555} then save as style.css not style.txt. You then open notepad again to create the html file, one that imports the style.css file. If you don't know how to do this, then just stop reading and get this book.) There wasn't anything in this book that I could not have picked up on my own, via reading other people's CSS files. Save your money, get Meyer's 2nd book instead (ISBN 0735714258), which explains some things you can't get by reading code alone.

This is a good book, but before buying it, check that you are in the target audience. It is not a reference book. It is not for complete newbies. It is not for gurus, either.
It is more like a hands-on CSS training course for somebody who has used HTML a lot, knows a little bit about CSS, and who wants to make fuller use of CSS. If this is what you are looking for, this is an excellent book. It is well-produced, with appropriate and intelligent use of color screenshots, too.
You will need to use some kind of reference in addition to this book when you actually write CSS for your own sites.

I give this book 3 stars, because it does a very good job of explaining and dealing with common issues in CSS. Unfortunately, the designs themselves are on the whole horrible - sorry, it's the only word. It's a shame that the author didn't get some designs from a graphic/web designer to complement what are on the whole excellent explanations of dealing with real world CSS issues, especially as he makes design comments, he's not qualified to make. Have a look at excerpt 10 in the sample pages to get an idea. This is an important issue because one of the powers of CSS is that it can be used to integrate the design and the content in a meaningful and elegant way. On the positive side, often the small pointers that he has for labelling css are particularly good, and I regularly find myself going 'ah, that's so useful'. If your CSS skills are well up to scratch perhaps look at Zeldman's 'Designing with Web Standards' as a possible alternative, but if your still working your way through the CSS in the real world then this is a very useful and practical book and I for one (with 8 years of web-building behind me) find it useful.

If I ever meet Eric Meyer in person, I'll have to drop to my knees and worship him. All of his books are outstanding, but this one is his best.

It's not for CSS beginners at all, but if you're basically familiar with CSS and want to learn more practical applications, then this book is for you:

- Navigation menus with CSS
- retrofitting existing pages for CSS
- creating printable pages

There's something good on every page. I teach Web design and have recommended it to my students. You can't go wrong with Eric Meyer and CSS.

I have a few issues with this book, and I have to admit from the start that I only worked through part of the first chapter, then gave up.

1. You are forced through the learning path of working through the examples whether you want to or not.

A reference book this is not, and good luck trying to find an answer to a particular question by searching the index or the TOC. You run across some good stuff just browsing, but that's not how I work best.

2.If you want to learn this way, then fine, but I found his instructions for working through the examples inadquate and often confusing. For example: I read the paragraph at the bottom of the page on page 5 about 10 times and still didn't understand his recomendation for dropping cellpadding and retaining cellspacing when restyling a table layout [excepts]: "...CSS2 states...that margins are not applied to table cells...support for padding on table cells...is pretty good, so we can drop cellpadding. If this approach strikes you as a bad idea, yo could leave in cellpadding to go with cellspacing." OK, so what should I do????

3. He indicates that the book is aimed at intermediate web designers, but presents some really basic info in sidebars, such as defining "declaration" on page 6 and "rule" on page 7. [In fact, why weren't these defined in the same visual area, in relation to each other? That's when you really get it.]

4. He doesn't give the adequate overviews or context for the restyles, and doesn't explain his syntax. I mean, if you don't know what a "rule" is, why would you understand why he uses an id that looks like this: td#advert and then one that looks like this: #content-top td. I knashed my teeth over this one for a while. Still don't get it. Or why use ems or percentages for fonts? He uses both, with no explanation of why, or the pitfalls.

I may get more out of this book when I know more...but then I will know more, and may not need it.

I do recommend the Visual Quickstart Guide by Teague: DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition. Easy to read, information is grouped and presented logically. Easy to find answers. This book is not comprehensive, but a good basic reference.

Wanna learn CSS with a beautifully illustrated, simple, and technically accurate tutorial book? Look no further! Eric and the review team have crafted a wonderful book on CSS.

Why would you buy it?

1) CSS is the next step up in web design. It's fluid, flexible, can make your pages load faster, and can be MUCH easier to work with than screwing around with tables and placeholder images.

2) It'll make your page more appealing to people and search engines.

3) This is a tutorial book. You can get a reasonably good handle on CSS if you are not already an expert.

4) It not only walks you through the exercises in words but presents visual representations of what your example pages will look like.

5) Lots of books accomplish #4 to some degree but this is an oversized color volume, which makes it much easier to work with.

6) New Riders makes good stuff. They are consistently one of the best publishers along with O'Reilly and this book is no different.

There is no "quick reference" in this book for all the CSS markups you will learn in the tutorials and the index could have been a little bit better. There were a couple little things that didn't seem to work perfectly, but 99% of the time the exercises turned out perfectly. Other than those few things, this book is about as good as it gets.

In the nature of fair disclosure, New Riders provided a complimentary copy of the book for review a couple of months ago. It has gotten and will continue to get plenty of use.

Before skimming through "Eric Meyer on CSS" I expected an introductory level CSS tutorial book that would provide readers with step-by-step instructions on how to create efficient CSS layouts. The back cover lists standard concepts that are covered in the book in addition to an accurate depiction of Eric Meyer's professional experience level and expert ability with CSS [...]. Yet, after reading the introduction and beginning the first few chapters, I quickly learned this book is ideal for persons with a solid foundation in HTML and at least a basic understanding of CSS. For example, project 1 (i.e. chapter 1) illustrates how to remove HTML markup and replace it with CSS layout, but does not go into detail about the HTML markup and mentions CSS properties/terminology as a side note rather than main point.

I think a major selling point of "Eric Meyer on CSS" is its excellent project based approach to CSS; each project can be completed in a single session and built my proficiency and confidence upon chapter completion. Additionally, the chapter layout is quite organized and easy to follow with full support and completed files available from the book's website. For example, the necessary steps for each project are incorporated into the main body of the text with illustrations and easily identifiable code. Go to the website to double check for accuracy or help troublshoot your work. Definitions, clarifications, warnings, and sample code links are neatly laid out in the columns to the side of the text's main body. Depending upon your comfort level of CSS, it is easy to skip around chapters and projects or work straight through.

An inconveniencing aspect of this book is that the CSS is difficult to reference. While the index lists the page numbers to CSS functions, the CSS is incorporated into any number of projects/tutorials, which may or may not be useful for the task you are performing. This book transforms HTML pages into CSS efficient pages; this is a positive consistent quality throughout "Eric Meyer on CSS", but it may have less relevance for people wishing to create HTML + CSS pages from scratch. In future versions of this book, I think it would be interesting to note layout differences between HTML versions and include CSS for XHTML.

Overall, I found "Eric Meyer on CSS" a transformational book for HTML and CSS and I give it the highest possible rating. I recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in CSS or who may use CSS on a quasi regular basis. It is a fine addition to any level (i.e. introductory, intermediate, advanced) CSS library or small collection. Essentially this book taught me how to do professional quality HTML "make overs" with CSS in a manner of speaking; it taught me how to convert HTML pages into more efficient and attractive pages using CSS.

This book felt more like a project book in which we follow along with Eric as he builds each of 13 projects. Although I found the follow-along process somewhat useful, it didn't address what I wanted to do - build my own project. To find the CSS elements I wanted for my own project required searching through page after page to find the rule I needed.

I found Mr. Meyer's online project files quite useful and helpful because I didn't have to write any code. I'm reasonably proficient in HTML but not in CSS - so I was hoping for more of a reference manual - rather than a "this is how I did it" project book.

As Mr. Meyer describes in his book (paraphrasing) - this book IS NOT for those new to CSS, who want to understand the subtleties of CSS, done web design only in WYSIWYG environments, or want CSS that works in any environment.

This is NOT A CSS REFERENCE BOOK. I would call it a hands-on project book.

If I were more of a follow-along learner, I'd probably rate this book higher. Especially if I wanted to know "how did he do that?" I'd rate it much higher. I'm not disappointed, but I didn't get much from this book.

After all that I've read about Eric Meyer, I must admit I was left wanting after reading this book. The experience reminded me of certain teachers I had in college: very bright, knew what they were doing, but did not know how to effectively convey their knowledge to others. For instance, his erratic use of varying units of measure within the same CSS rule - usually without explanation - goes against most all professional design convention, making the resulting code both difficult to learn AND difficult to maintain (VERY confusing for subsequent Web technicians needing to modify the work).

Buy the book - but buy it USED.

Being in the IT industry, mostly web based, I thought I would give this book a try to see what new material I could learn and apply in my job. Anyway, it was a disappointment. The book doesn't really explain anything but walks you through on changing from a non CSS site to one. It's not that good for what CSS is capable of doing either and the options associated with it. Overall, this book really isn't any good for someone that has experience. To me, it's more of a beginner to intermediate level for those who have only scratched the surface of CSS. If your experienced, don't bother.

If you are interested in learning about CSS, especially its power, you need this book. If you really gotta learn about CSS, you need this book. Of course it will get dog-earred from use and if purchased for a "corporate use" library, you may have to dust off your boxing gloves. I personally refuse to share!

Excellent resource. Do yourself a favor and work the examples throughout the book. Once you start with Chapter 1, you'll want to anyway. Usually I start these but don't finish. This one was different. I felt I had to finish -- like a great novel you can't put down until you see "the end".

Last year, I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and I was amazed at the swordsmanship on display. Swords were no longer weapons, but extensions of arms - as if they were new appendages grown especially for the task. Eric Meyer can wield CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in just the same way as those actors could wield swords. His level of understanding is exceptional and is only matched by perhaps half a dozen others.

What sets Eric apart from others is his ability to convey his magic to almost anyone. Authors with a decent knowledge of HTML will be completely comfortable with this book. Eric demonstrates how to take exsiting designs and make them look professional and sophisticated, without resorting to bloated markup packed with font tags and spacer images.

I got "Eric Meyer on CSS" for Christmas and spent much of the Christmas period reading it. I tackled the whole book initially without using a computer. Eric's writing style is conversational and amusing, putting the reader at ease immediately. I could follow each project without difficulty, eyes widening with every page. I am already pretty good at using CSS, but with each page I learned more. After finishing it, I went back and worked through the book with the computer, following each example and going through the various end-of-chapter experiments. Gaps in my knowledge were filled in and my understanding grew with each project.

Having finished the book completely, I am eager to begin experimenting on my own projects. "Eric Meyer on CSS" has left me excited about what can be achieved and I strongly recommend it to those that want to further enhance any existing knowledge of basic CSS.

Being a fan of Eric Meyer's previous book on CSS, I was pretty keen on what to expect from 'Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design' in terms of quality. Mr. Meyer's original CSS book was a top notch piece of work when it first came out, and it's a great book today. Like HTML books, there are lots of options available to people if you want to learn how to develop CSS book from a design perspective, but there are not many books out there that look at the subject from a case study point of view.

Look no further.

In the author's book, he takes exactly this route, defining 13 projects, and the nuts of bolts of each one of these projects as it relates to CSS design. Headlined by full color pages and clear, concise writing, this is a book that is easy to read and enjoyable to follow.

The problem is that the things that make this book so unique are also its weakness.

While a case study approach sounds good on paper and it IS interesting, the fact that unless you plan to copy the exact design that Mr. Meyer is using, this text is little more than just a nice reference to relate to. Being different doesn't mean one is wrong, but unless the reader knows what to expect, they might be disappointed by this text.

What this book IS: a case study book that points out different uses of CSS on web pages, highlighting certain tips and tricks that were put to use to get the desired effect

What this book IS NOT: a reference book or a learning tool of how to get CSS working with web pages. This book fully expects the reader to have some understanding/experience of CSS, and they are looking to get further education beyond the bachelor's degree in CSS that they already got (perhaps from reading CSS: The Definitive Reference).

Nice book, but different. Keep that in mind when considering purchasing this text.

**** RECOMMENDED

Eric's writing is great, however, for a thin book with limited content, my opinion is that New Riders Publishing got greedy with the pricing of the book. $45 retail in the stores?! For the price I expected a book with more meat, more content as opposed to a few tips and tricks. For the price, New Riders could have at least included a disk with all the samples that you are required to download online if you wish to work along as the book is intended. In the book, what Eric has done is to show a few CSS tips and cool tricks, his writing style is very good and his tips are great, however, there isn't enough of it in this book. Don't buy it new, or at least not in the retail stores, it isn't worth the price.
If this is a must have book for you, buy it at Amazon's online price, used, or somewhere such as nerdbooks.com and avoid the FULL $45 retail price such as charged by places like Books-a-Million!!

Wonderful book, but when the author says you need to know some CSS going in, he means it. This is not a beginners book, to get the most out of it you should know some CSS before opening it.

I started with Steve Callihan's CSS By Example and then 'graduated' to this book. Boy was I glad. Learned a lot more by doing this. I also was able to concentrate on the design elements and tips Meyers offered instead of feeling like I was lost in learning the code.

I recently purchased this book based on the customer reviews I read here on Amazon. I must say that it is a very well-written book, and the author seems extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter. However, I am slightly disappointed that there is not more technical information on how to correctly write Cascading Style Sheets and all the different CSS properties available. Instead, the author leads the reader through several hands-on projects designed to teach the reader how to implement different design techniques using CSS. I would have preferred a little more reference information (maybe an appendix) that allows the reader to use the book as a quick reference when starting a new CSS project or brushing up on some of the technical aspects. The material strikes me as having been written more for someone already very proficient in CSS who simply needs more design ideas, not for somone who is still learning how to implement CSS into a Web site. Nevertheless, it is still a very useful book.

As someone who understands a great deal about web design, I am usually very critical of books I read. In general, they either lack the detailed examples or the plain language that I prefer to find when I read them. However, Eric Meyer has done an excellent job in providing both. The book is broken down into projects where you are taught how to apply CSS to everything from skinning a menu to creating an online greeting card. I have always had a rather basic knowledge of CSS and let my WYSIWYG editor do most of the work, but now I have a powerful tool to do some advanced, custom work. I recommend this book to the beginner as well as the advanced designer.

I was very skeptical of this book at first, Erics example projects that you learn from seem kind of lame and dated looking, and although they arent visually exciting this isnt a design book, its a book to learn CSS, and learn it I did.

Im already an experienced web developer with some CSS experience but never with fully tableless design. I was able to read this book fairly quickly gather quick knowledge of the aspects of CSS I did not know about. The sites he has you build dont look exciting, however they do a good job teaching you the fundamentals, which is the most important part. I was able to read a chapter, then goto my own personal website which was more fun and apply what I learned. Then read another chapter learn something else and then apply that knowledge to the site I was working on. By the time I finished the book, I had also made a pretty cool site of my own that was visually exciting to me as well as CSS rich (look ma, no tables!)

This way I was getting the most of his excercises, and then applying them to my own fun design. I think this is a perfect way to learn css and I recommend this "dual-path" approach so you don't get totally bored working on eric's designs only.

The first thing I read to learn CSS was Meyer's CSS: The Definitive Guide (vol. 1) and it was helpful, but I needed the project work in Mastering to really get going with CSS. Like so many web languages it's easier to learn CSS if you can play with someone else's code first. The projects presented in Mastering addressed nearly all of the topics I was interested in. By the end I felt ready to dive into the redesign my department's web site using CSS as the primary formatting language.

This is an outsatnding book. Unfortunately it turned me into a css geek for a few weeks and I had to rebuild my company web site from scratch.

the flip side is that I now have a full featured e-commerce site with nary an html table in sight.

I marvel any author these days who can produce a pratical and readable book on software. Eric does a good job at making us want to read and learn the gems in CSS. I like it because the examples are relevant and you can see how you can apply them. This book is more a learning by doing book then many others that I have read on the same subject. Eric will not bore you with explanations, but instead uses examples to demonstrate the fine points. Good book to have.

This is an excellent book for progressing from using style sheets for specifying only fonts and colors to building entire sites driven by CSS layout rendering--it is not a reference book. The author presents thirteen different real-world types of projects to teach and explain the power of CSS, ranging from conversion of existing pages and creation of menuing systems, to multicolumn layout. A short book that will make big changes in the way you build web sites.

Over 90% of the browsers surfing the internet are using IE, but this book's examples seem to only work best on Netscape browsers. Although the author suggested many hacks for both IE and Netscape, i.e. the voice-family in page 241 for the right margin hacks on Windows IE. It still doesn't work on Windows XP Pro IE6 sp1. The design concept is great though.

Books in Australia are hideously expensive, particularly technical ones - so I generally spend a great deal of time researching which one is going to be the best value. I can honestly say this is one of the best book buys I've made, and is certainly not gathering any dust - rather it's getting tattered way too soon from overuse!

Being busy, it's a case of working through each project when I can but find that I actually look forward to doing so ahead of time. I've dabbled in CSS for some time now, and even though this is not a definitive reference book, Eric makes it so easy to follow each step, tossing in useful information along the way. It's easy enough to supplement this by looking up CSS references online.

The extensive list of project files means you can pick up a project at any stage or skip ahead to compare how you are doing. Eric's pleasant and easy writing style makes for an enjoyable read. I love this book!

I wanted a quick crash course in CSS; instead this book gave me a comprehensive start that led me on a path to a solid foundation in designing with Cascading Style Sheets.

Attention to details, comprehensive and professional writing style, and superior clarity are just some of the strengths of this book. I only wish that more IT books were as easy to read as this one.

So far I am just dabbling with CSS. This book is great for taking you from ground zero to something svelte. The lessen format is like having your personal tutor. I will eventually get around to something practical. In the mean time I am expanding my universe.

So far I find this to be midlevel coding. The real problem with top level is that you have know idea want you are doing and a lot of superfluous overhead is added to the commands; it is good for a quickie but can later paint you into a corner. Low level will give you tighter code and more control over results. Midlevel is a compromise but sometimes adds functionality that can not be reached at the lover level command line coding.

Every language has it strengths and purpose they just do not invent more complexity for the fun of it. I hope to have the mechanics down before I find out what it is.

For me this is the right book at the right time. What time is it for you?

I was personally disappointed in this book, being the tech geek that I am. And yet I still end up recommending it to about 5 people a day since I got it. This book is project-based, and walks the reader through several designs using CSS. I remember thinking at first glance at this book "Not what I was looking for, but WOW! this would be very useful for . . .". And with that, I began evangelizing. I kept the book for a couple of days, reading through it, and showing it to several web site designers who after a quick glance would write down the title so they could get their own copy. Then I left the book with our two web developers, who were last seen wrestling over who got to use the book first (my company paid for the book, so I felt no loss).

Now, as I mentioned, I'm a tech geek. I read the specs on the W3C website to find most of the info I want to know. I really liked Eric Meyer's "CSS: The Definitive Guide" and frequently visit the author's website ... for pointers and tips on using CSS (not to mention his fun little articles about life in general). But I realize for most people, they need a little more guidance - this book offers just that. This book is just one step down from having Eric Meyer come in and walk you through CSS.

If you've been interested in using CSS, but have felt like it's a little out of reach, this book will put CSS firmly in your grasp. I have never seen a book that has generated this kind of excitement among our designers & developers. Buy it now before it's out-of-stock again!

If like me you're the kind of (X)HTML coder who expects to develop finger-cancer from hitting "refresh" every 30 seconds in your eight different browsers as you change the same CSS rule over and over and over again, trying to get it to work in every window, then you, like me, will enjoy a similarly repetitive experience as you read this book: that of exclaiming "Aha!" and "Brilliant!" over and over and over again.

Don't be deceived by the glossy paper and pretty pictures: This is a book of real-work-oriented _solutions_. Each project gave me several ways to solve current snags I was hitting in my code. Each of them also inspired me with the confidence to create more ambitious layouts.

Although it's well-written and entertaining--a page-turner!--I haven't quite finished the book yet because I keep putting it down to tinker some more with the coding project that formerly had me stumped and demoralized. Then I pick the book up to leaf back through to a project that solved another problem I'm having, and that reminds me of something else really cool in there that I want to try out, and so on: two pages forward, twenty pages back. Eventually I'll have to turn the computer off to finish reading.

Note: This is not a book for beginners. Meyer assumes that you know how CSS works and have spent some time trying to use it. You needn't be a whiz, though, to appreciate it.

Negatives? All I can think of is that I want it to be longer. And, in fact, it is: be sure to check out the bonus chapters at the book's web site; they're important. Oh, and the index could be more detailed, but it's not a big deal since the book is compact and well-organized enough to allow you to remember where you saw something useful.

In short, if you use CSS, buy this book. Then you, too, can replace your repetitive refresh-clicking motion with a repetitive forehead-smacking one.

In the interest of full disclosure, I submit my bias up front: everything I've read by Eric, whether book, article, or newsgroup post dashed off to aid a complete stranger, has been clarity nonpareil. In addition, I cheerfully choose to ignore his gracious yet wholly unexpected and aberrant judgment in mentioning my name in the acknowledgements.

If you are a person who frequents Internet newsgroups, listservs, and online forums related to Web work, you cannot have missed the word of mouth that is going around about this book. The praise is from all ranges of Web design experience and it is well-deserved.

I don't need to outline the book's contents. The editorial reviews and the information on the book's web site do that in detail. Eric has also made the code available to people who do not buy the book. But if you just work the code, you will be missing the book's motivation, warnings, tips, advice, colorful layout, and wit that make the code pop.

Eric, right from the outset, shows you how to combine both elementary and advanced style techniques. He leads you to do this in such a natural, seamless way that at different stages in each project you realize with a start that you just worked a bit of magic!

A long time ago, working in a huge factory in Pittsburgh, I tagged along as a helper to a mechanic who was massive and muscular. I fully expected prodigious feats of brute strength from the man. None were to be seen. His favorite saying was "If you have to use force, you must be doing something wrong." Eric calmly cuts through the clutter and makes it all look easy with just that spirit.

I want to make an appeal to those Web workers, such as myself, who code exclusively for the Internet Explorer browser: from time to time Eric will invite you to follow along in another advanced browser, such as Mozilla or Netscape 6, to see effects not yet supported by IE. You will richly profit from the opportunity. By the time future versions of the Microsoft browser support the standards that Eric is showing, you will be way ahead of the game.

"Eric Meyer on CSS" is destined to be on the must-have list of *everyone* who wants to stay ahead in this ever-changing Web game.

Had the book about a week now, as a novice I was worried when I read the intro. and who the book was intended for. All I can say is that the book is suitable for relative beginners, it provokes excitement, wonder and amazement. I found the book mentioned in the Project Seven Newsgroup so a big thanks to everybody who mentioned it, and last but not least, to Eric for a great read.

Awesome learn by example book IF you already have a little background in CSS, and even then if your knowledge is elementary you might be lost on some of the finer points. If it had a little more theory and explanations it would be a killer book, but I guess Eric Meyer didn't have patience enough for that. He is anyway a Master in CSS styling, no doubts about that, and the right author too look at for learning and inspiration. The book is structured around several projects that you see in the various developing stages from beginning to end in reasonably small steps. The explanations of what's going on are like what you would expect from a guru/designer/artist that is, far from complete and basic. Again is like you had the chance to peek over Eric's shoulder while he works, but he won't be bothered to lose too much of his time after you. But don't get me wrong, this book is a must have for anyone interested in CSS, even if I would not buy it now (it starts being a bit dated) but would wait for his next book that should come out this autumn.

The first seen this book seems one more technical guide about CSS, but to the first contact realizes that it is a great reference based on needs to everyday of the web designer.
The book starts boarding how to initiate layout HTML transition for layout hybrid (still with the tables use but of optimized way), and with that goes gradually preparing the reader to think and to create the such wished Layout CSS (Tableless).
Besides talking about CSS he shows how to conceive a semantically correct code HTML and thus obtain a more organized and accessible structure.
This book boards the structure and presentation separation concept, positioning CSS, columns in CSS, leaves creation of alternative style, forms and effects presentation in links, lists and images.
The book Eric Mayer on CSS is one of the best references about CSS who already I saw, and can tell that he is indispensable in the web designer library.

Meyer is the go-to guy for all things CSS, and this book is ample evidence of that. If you ever needed to know anything about CSS (and/or need a handy desk reference instead of constantly Googling or visiting AListApart.com), look no further. While those with a few years' worth of CSS under their belts already will find some of the content a bit slow and basic, you can't beat this for a first-class reference guide when you're stuck or need to double-check your compliance. This book is comprehensive, thoughtfully written and, above all, useful.

Good hands on experience...need more reference, but that's why I should get another book. If you are looking for real world examples and projects, this is a great tool.

Make sure you kow what you are doing before you pick up this beauty. Its not for the CSS beginner, but is perfect for the web developer who is really only looking for answers.

Its format is sort of recipe-like in that he guides you step by step through some very specific types of projects, but you can certainly adapt the lesons to do your own thing.

Since Eric is a bit of a CSS purist, he doesnt really cover hacks and work arounds for the various browser incompatibilities, and the screenshots are all on Netscape on Mac. I noted that in a few places my IE 6 on Win XP didnt render exactly the same way.

Beautiful 4 color layout - but why did they make the images so small?

Despite the couple of little issues I had with the book, this may be the best CSS book ever written.

I found this book to be extremly useful. A step by step manual of CSS and how it works with over 20 great examples to learn by. For someone looking to learn more about CSS and it's abilities, this is a great beginers book.

This book is far from a comprehensive reference guide for CSS (see the O'reilly CSS Definitive Guide - also by Eric - for that), but it is a great step-by-step get-your-feet-wet introduction to the principles of CSS. We use it as part of our training for all of our web interns and employees.

If you learn by doing the examples, this is the book for you. Clearly written with extensive source code available from the net.

This is a gorgeous, full-color, masterfully laid-out piece of work by an author with cutting-edge understanding of Cascading Style Sheets and willingness to share his fine creative judgement. Yet it may take you a while to convince yourself (as it did me myself) that you need one more Eric Meyer CSS title. The glowing reviews finally broke through my resistance, and my facility with CSS has had several breakthroughs as a result.

Like many of you, I already have Eric's two premier titles for guiding web transitions from the difficult world of patched-together HTML solutions to the powerful, systematic, maintenance-friendly potentials of CSS. Here's my experience so you can see if it matches yours.

Through insightful and persuasive volumes such as Owen Briggs 'C S S: Separating Content from Presentation' (see reviews at ISBN 1904151043) I finally got that *aha* experience about CSS: These new standards are more than just style sheets, design aids, and download-enhancers; more even than the sum of these: once HTML 4 standards are better followed by browsers, CSS will open up all web-design work in remarkable ways. *HOWEVER*: design life in the meanwhile is extremely frustrating while browsers take their sweet time repairing past imbedded sins. As much as I wanted to break free from old HTML ways, the inconsistencies and vagaries of how browsers render CSS so discouraged me from solving design issues with CSS, that I considered taking a two year sabbatical from design until technology caught up. I thought I was just 'losing it' until I found Eric's own statement right on my desk in 'C S S: The Definitive Guide': "You may notice that, unlike other chapters, almost none of the figures in (the chapter on Positioning objects) was generated with a web browser. This is... a statement about the reliability and consistency of positioning implementations..."

What's the average designer to do when even Jeffrey Zeldman admits (in his preface here) that his fallback position in the current world of CSS is *emailing Eric Meyer*? In this volume we see. Eric walks you through common types of design and redesign issues are solvable through CSS (and provides frequent color screen shots displaying exactly what happens after small changes in code). It is refreshing that so much care is taken with both the design and writing of this book. Even the *hints* in margins surprise me - after I thought I had read practically every CSS hint published to date. Eric puts them together in an engaging manner.

No matter how skilled you are with design or with HTML, unless your mastery of CSS specifically is on a par with Eric's (all 3 or 4 of you such people), I think that after reading twenty pages of "Eric on CSS" you are likely to feel you wasted valuable time each week since this book's release! Thanks, Eric. Thanks, New Riders for the time and expense to make such a quality volume. Fine work on the companion web site and downloadable code as well!

I'd been noodling around with writing and implementing CSS and run into my fair share of brick walls. But I see the future and it is CSS, this is the book that inspired me to take up the cause again in earnest.

The book contains a series of real-life scenarios so you can jump in right away and start using CSS to do what you already do with HTML, just better and faster, and some things you can't do with HTML alone. The projects get increasing more advanced as the book progresses, which makes delving in deeper much less painful than it needs to be because you have an expert guide providing reliable tips and warnings the whole way. For those who have tinkered with CSS cross browser compatibly know that advice alone is worth the cost of the book. There's also a companion site where you can download files to follow along step-by-step with each chapter or double check your own work as you go along.

Like all masters, Meyer makes CSS look easy and this book is put to best use as a companion to an expansive reference guide. After finishing the first chapter I was inspired to download the w3c standards for CSS2. Anything that can get me to read ultra-geeky dry-as-toast info from the consortium and make sense of it is really on to something. Use Meyer's insights and choices in this book as a guide for your own projects as a way to navigate the endless decisions you'll need to make when implementing CSS on your own. If you're looking for a book that will show you how to intelligently approach implementing reliable CSS and spark your creative side this is an excellent choice.

Santa left this gift for me after watching me struggle with CSS. I've got a few CSS books and they've been helpful, but going through this book, using the accompanying website and working through the projects, "I got it!" And since it helped me so much, I've just odered the author's follow-up, More Eric Meyer on CSS. Highly recommended.

I read the reviews before buying this book and "More Eric..", but like a fool I didn't take the time to read the books when they showed up because I was so hopping busy learning html and putting sites together that I just didn't have the time....

But you gotta get these books! Because when you finally sit down to read the first 3 pages of the first book you start seeing repetitive html code disappearing by the TRUCKLOAD. Font tags: your days are numbered. Tables, < br >
, -- whooosh, see ya.

And the power of CSS is so totally awesome that you just want to stay up late at night re-doing all the 30 plus sites you finished without CSS and now you want to write Eric and ask him to include caffeine addiction tips in his next dispatch because you can't believe you've got so much power in CSS and, well, thanks, Eric, for making life grand again.

This is a very good cook book style introduction to best practices in CSS web authoring. It is a great pity that many browsers - not only legacy browsers - are not sufficiently CSS compliant to render correct use of CSS useful at present. Nevertheless, much of the material presented by Eric Meyer can be used, and this book remains an excellent introduction to the way things should be done. Look at http://www.benjaminrossen.com to see a site made using largly Eric Meyer insights and ideas.

Eric has made CSS sane. It is now finally safe to go back to those old designs you did, and re-write them safely; logically and with minimal chances of drowning. I had a wonderful time with this book; using it to clean up and modernize many old web designs I've done over the years. You'll find it straight forward and very readable. Plenty of code, explanations, suggestions, color photos and design concepts. But the real action is the project-approach that this book takes. Work through them and then tackle your own stuff. If you're serious about using the power of CSS, make the investment in Mr. Meyer's 300+ pages of clarity. Thanks Eric! Keep 'em coming.

I have used alittle CSS on my pages before, but Eric shows how to take full advantage and explains the benefits of implementing more CSS styles than I have ever thought possible. I have cut the amount of code on the pages by at least 20% and at the same time added more style and control to the pages.

I started using some of his styles within a week of picking up the book. I was stuck in one area, I down loaded the lessons. It is the easiest way to see how the code effects the pages and what changes and additions I needed to make. I can't say enough about how easy the styles and the code are to follow with the down loaded pages.

This is the best book on CSS, period. It is not a reference, and in fact it would be beneficial to have a reference on hand while reading it. However there is no book within miles of this one in describing the power of CSS for use in everyday web design.

Most books try to list the specifications CSS with hopelessly simple examples that leave one with little knowledge of how CSS can be used to design web sites that are complex and elegant. This book shows one how to, any why it is important to, unlearn all the HTML work-arounds we have been using for years. No more transparent gif's to organize empty space. No more tables nested in tables nested in tables.

Brilliant work. Now I know why they developed CSS. You cannot go wrong with this author and this book.

If you really want to use CSS, but were put off by a lack of practical guides, then your ship has come in. If you think that perhaps this is going to be a geeky, bleeding edge trip that ignores the cross-browser question, then you're wrong. Eric Meyer does CSS that you can use now- not next year.

Get it. You'll be very glad you did.

-
Al Sparber

This book is good to practice CSS. To be used before the Meyer's second one ("More Eric Meyer On CSS"). On the other hand, because it was written in 2002, it is a little obsolete for some techniques. The using of the 'table' tag for layout is still here. This is not the case in the second book which use the positionning... and sorry for my english !!!

I have found better books out there, but this one is okay. Good to get you started.

This book helped me learn CSS the professional way. This is the only book I've been able to use for a considerable period of time in comparison to other CSS books in market, for developing web pages. The only cons was that it took time for me to know the author's style of explanation!. Once that was cleared, it helped me to a great extent.

Anyone who knows the name Eric Meyer knows that he is a diety in the CSS world. This book takes a look at a few step-by-step projects that will help newbies understand how, when, and why to use CSS.
That said, I do not recommend this book to those who are already well versed in CSS. I really didn't get a lot out of it, but I would consider myself a more advanced reader. I can definitely see the benefit for people just getting their feet wet.

Excellent Book!

This book is a definite plus for all people who have dabbled in table-free design but weren't quite ready to dive head first. If you are not familiar with basic CSS mark up, this book is not for you. If you wish to learn CSS from the ground up- see Christopher Schmitt's book "Designing CSS Web Pages" published by New Riders as well. Anyone who uses heavy javascript in their design will also find many streamlined CSS alternatives to that clunky code. "More Eric Meyer on CSS" starts off with a lesson on how to convert an existing table layout to cascading style sheets. I like the way Eric leads through the examples, every step in the code reveals possible browser conflicts. Lucky for us, he is able to supply the right workaround to make the pages compliant. Readers will also walk though styling a photo gallery, styling a financial report, `transparency layout', and many more. My favorite lessons were CSS-Driven Drop-Down Menus, Opening the Doors to Attractive Tabs, and Designing in the Garden. I have been a fan of the csszengarden site, and I had fun reaching the Zen Garden!
Overall, this was a useful and comprehensive book. Eric Meyer has a simple way of presenting the lessons. None of the ten lessons he covers should take longer than one hour. He is obviously extremely knowledgeable in this field. His praise is well deserved. I personally plan on implementing these lessons on my personal site and those of future clients. The only flaw I found with this book was chapter 10's missing lesson file from the books website, this was alright, as a similar html file was supplied. It was definitely not enough to lower my perfect rating though.

I bought the book hoping to learn how to create pop-up menus. I was disappointed in that respect. I did find it to be a nice guide for using style sheets for specific situations. Readers who do the homework and visit the companion website can pick up tips on getting things done. I would caution against doing everything shown. Many of the tricks require setting specific positions or heights or widths. Such tricks create pages that are not highly maintainable.

This book does a great job on what it says it does. But do you know what it does? Just be sure you do before you buy it. This book is intended not to teach you CSS, it presumes you already know CSS2. Instead of teaching you the actual language this book shows you how to apply it. Each chapter is a detailed 'case study' if you want to call it that. Meyer does a great job at walking you through various real life scenarios you might encounter such as converting a normal web template to a CSS one. So don't get me wrong this book is a 5 star book in that regard but the problem is I don't think most people realize that's all this book is really for.

Simply put, if you don't already know how to write complex CSS2 stylesheets then BUY ANOTHER BOOK first. Fortunately for myself I've been a professional designer / developer for 5 years now, so when I picked up this book (not knowing how to write complex CSS prior to reading it) I was able to figure out the code and learn CSS2 on the fly. However this is not a good way to learn for many people so if you don't know CSS yet or not really familar with it try another book before picking this one up. Otherwise BUY THIS BOOK becuase YES, it is really really good!

I've utilized CSS for quite a while (being an early adopter on my personal site) and had a strong grasp of the language. This book proved to be a great surprise as I learned some great tips and tricks for Cascading Style Sheets and expanded my understanding of some of the fundamental intricacies within pure CSS (as opposed to browser-mangled support).

I leant this book to a friend of mine who is familiar, though not an expert with CSS and she found it just as useful (if not more so) than I do.

This isn't a CSS manual, if you don't have a decent CSS reference, I highly recommend that you pick one up. Even better if it is by Eric too. ;)

Eric is a great source of CSS information and I hope he continues to produce such great material.

I sincerely think Eric Meyer and New Riders delivered a masterpiece. This is a project-based book on CSS; covering clean, CSS based designs, full of real world advices and common sense. As always Eric also gives advice on common browser's pitfalls and bugs and provide elegant and clean solutions to get around them. If you are serious at CSS, and anybody should be, you can't miss this book; yet, beginners may look elsewhere to get a solid understanding before digging this one.
Last but not least, this is an oversized full colours volume, with gorgeous design and typography, definitely the best-looking computer book I ever read.

Wanna learn CSS with a beautifully illustrated, simple, and technically accurate tutorial book? Look no further! Eric and the review team have crafted a wonderful book on CSS.

Why would you buy it?

1) CSS is the next step up in web design. It's fluid, flexible, can make your pages load faster, and can be MUCH easier to work with than screwing around with tables and placeholder images. (It is not perfect, however, so you may only use it to enhance table based layouts for now.)

2) You'll be able to make your page more appealing to people and search engines.

3) This is a tutorial book. You can get a reasonably good handle on CSS if you are not already an expert.

4) It not only walks you through the exercises in words, but presents visual representations of what your example pages will look like.

5) Lots of books accomplish #4 to some degree. This is an oversized color volume which makes it much easier to work with.

6) New Riders makes good stuff. They are consistently one of the best publishers along with O'Reilly. This book is no different.

There is no "quick reference" in this book for all the CSS markups you will learn in the tutorials and the index could have been a little bit better. There were a couple little things that didn't seem to work as they were supposed to, but 99% of the time the exercises turned out perfectly. Overall, this book is about as good as it gets.

In the nature of fair disclosure, New Riders provided a complimentary copy of the book for review a couple of months ago. It has gotten and will continue to get plenty of use.

No book can be perfect for everyone. This is not a beginner's book, nor is it an exhaustive reference. What it is, is a workshop in which the reader gets to see into the mind of a CSS expert while he goes through a number of redesigns. Mr. Myers takes us through redesigns, one step at a time with numerous screen shots so we can see exactly what each new style does. With an accessible, informal voice, he also explains the reasons for each decision so we can begin to think like a style sheet pro. As a tutorial for web designers with a bit of CSS knowledge who want to become experts this book may be just the ticket. A great niche book.

Eric Meyer has made a career out of teaching web professionals and amateurs alike how to fully exploit the powerful design features of cascading style sheets. There's proabbly no one out there who knows more about the quirks of how modern browsers implement CSS and how best to deal with these infuriating inconsistencies. This book gives clear, concise work-along examples of how to use CSS to its fullest advantage in your website. Highly recommended to anyone who has finally realized that FONT tags have gone the way of the dodo.

This book isn't your normal "this is the tag, this is what it does" type of thing. It uses REAL examples.. actually useful examples that can be implemented with ease.

I think my favorite chapter is Project 7 -- "Making an Input form Look Good". I think that making input forms are the biggest challenge for web designers (they can look SO ugly). This chapter takes a generic form and turns it into a well designed page, just by adding a little CSS!

I learned a great deal by reading this book, and I recommend it highly.

I had never read any of Eric Meyer's books before, but as an avid reader of his web portal meyerweb.com, I knew this would be great. Eric makes it easy for any web designer who wants to conform to web standards!