Win a copy of More Eric Meyer on CSS

Eric Meyer on CSS is renowned as a classic book in this area; unsurprisingly (and pleasingly for the rest of us) Eric is back with another 10 carefully crafted CSS-based projects which walk us through the steps we need to take to build beautiful standards based, cross-browser designs.

The projects cover such topics as covering an HTML-based design to a pure CSS one, using background images to achieve cross browser translucency effects and creating drop-down menus without using JavaScript.

The climax of the book is where Eric describes the creation of a design for the CSS Zen Garden web site – a fantastic resource that has shown the power of CSS to the world, and showcased some incredible talent along the way.

New Riders - the publishers of More Eric Meyer on CSS – have kindly agreed to give five copies of this excellent book away to readers of DMXzone. All you have to do to be in the virtual hat is to drop us an e-mail telling me what the CSS Zen Garden design created in Chapter 10 (but viewable here) is actually called (hint there's a View this design's CSS link on the page, or you could read on).

Competition winners to be announced on 25th November.

Don't feel confident about winning? The Amazon page is here >>

Review: More Eric Meyer on CSS

 

Book Details

Author: Eric A. Meyer

Publisher: New Riders

ISBN: 0-7357-1425-8

Price: U.S. $45

General: Released April 2004, 271 pages

Table of Contents

Project 1: Converting an Existing Page

Project 2: Styling a Photo Collection

Project 3: Styling a Financial Report

Project 4: Positioning in the Background

Project 5: List-Based Menus

Project 6: CSS-Driven Drop-Down Menus

Project 7: Opening the Doors to Attractive Tabs

Project 8: Styling a Weblog

Project 9:Designing a Home Page

Project 10: Designing in the Garden

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover

Is the old adage, although I did once work for someone who used to smell books that had just returned from the printers! A more common method is to gently weigh the book in the hand … and indeed for just shy of 300 pages this book does feel quite meaty. The reason for that weight being that the book is printed on heavy paper in full colour – a quality process for quality content! As a book dedicated to highlighting best practice in web design and showing just how good CSS can be when used effectively, I feel the presentation (one notable exception aside) really aids the book's underlying message.

More Eric Meyer on CSS is the follow up to his classic 2002 volume, and takes the same approach as the earlier book in looking at a number of projects and tasks and working through a design clearly and methodically.

Targets (Audience and Browsers)

One thing I always look for when I first look at a book is how the author (or publisher) has identified their audience and whether the release meets that expectation.

In the introduction the book is stated to be aimed at someone who may have intermediate or expert HTML skills, and basic or intermediate CSS skills and wants to learn by following a project. Furthermore, the book is explicitly not aimed at complete beginners to CSS, those who don't wish to hand-code and those who are after a reference book or discussion of CSS theory.

I perceive this to be an extremely accurate and honest definition of the audience. Of course Eric's relaxed writing style and the flow of the book means that it is accessible and easy to follow, but if you don't know the basics you'll probably need to go elsewhere to bolster up your knowledge base if you want to move much further along the line of modification of the designs.

Ah yes the browser targets – well Mr. Meyer being an expert on CSS and Web Standards is quite careful to point out the book is:

"meant for browsers whose version number is greater than or equal to 5 (well, and Safari 1.0+)"

All the way through the book, information on browser compatibility, and the tweaks and dodges needed to make your layouts look the same whatever the browser, is embedded into the text. This is absolutely consistent with the overall approach and is a very natural way of bringing in the workarounds just as you need them. I can see this could potentially be frustrating if some weeks later you think 'I saw the solution to the this problem before, but where is it?', however is entirely in keeping with the ethos of the book. As a project based approach the emphasis is on learning by doing.

Content and Presentation

As a well-known guru in the CSS arena the technical content of the book is impeccable, and just for back up, Dave Shea (originator of the CSS Zen Garden) and Porter Glendinning (a member of the Web Standards Project Steering Committee) acted as technical reviewers.

The text is full not only of effective design and best practice but as befits a leading light, the author draws on the cutting edge approaches he sees in the CSS community. So, for example Douglas Bowman's "Sliding Doors of CSS" is used to provide the (clearly credited) inspiration for project 7 and Peter Nederlof's technique for getting IE/Win to accept a CSS driven menu system without the use of JavaScript is brought into Project 6.

Technical nuggets abound – project 10 contains a discussion of the ins and outs of using PNG files in your designs. Project 4 guides us through the development of a web page with translucency effects to create stunning looking web pages.

As I said previously the heavy paper and full colour design really does help this book enormously as the plethora of screenshots both inform and inspire. One little touch (or maybe not so little – someone's inspired decision – kudos to whoever they are) is that at the start of each chapter there are three images on the right hand side of the page. These show the unstyled HTML page (or starting point), a partially styled page and then the completed project. A lovely immediate indication of how the application of CSS can give a great result and an indication of what we can expect to learn in the chapter – excellent presentation!

In the side margins there are little asides - clearly marked notes, warnings and website suggestions (and the figure captions). These again aid the readability of the text and, given the number of browser glitches that are mentioned provide an extremely useful way of flagging issues without constantly breaking the flow of the description.

At the end of each project there are several suggestions (titled Branching Out) for building on the core project and tweaking the final design. Personally I find such ideas extremely helpful for guiding self-learning and development

Inspirational Gardening

The highlight of the book for me is project 10 which details the creation of a design for inclusion in the CSS Zen Garden. The design called 15 Petals was actually visually designed by Dave Shea and then turned into CSS driven layout by Eric. I am constantly impressed by the excellence of the work on that web site so to be walked through a design, complete with asides on browser glitches is, for me, a great conclusion to the volume.

In short if you're serious about web design this is a book that I think is a 'must have' addition to your collection, not the only book, but definitely it should be in there.

That notable exception I mentioned earlier, well no disrespect intended, but an unimaginative red, white and black cover … sorry that really doesn't appeal to me, it just seems so at odds with the visual gorgeousness inside. Fortunately there's always that old adage to fall back on.

Ian Blackham

Ian BlackhamFollowing a degree in Chemistry and a doctorate in Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Ian spent several years wrestling with acronyms in industrial R&D (SEM with a side order of EDS, AFM and TEM augmented with a topping of XPS and SIMS and yet more SEM and TEM).

Feeling that he needed a career with more terminology but less high voltages, Ian became a technical/commissioning editor with Wrox Press working on books as diverse as Beg VB Application Development and Professional Java Security. After Wrox's dissolution and a few short term assignments Ian became content manager at DMXzone.

Ian is a refugee from the industrial Black Country having slipped across the border to live in Birmingham. In his spare time he helps out with the website of a local history society, tries to makes sure he does what his wife Kate says, and worries that the little 'un Noah is already more grown up than he is.

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