A Bi-Monthly Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2003
STC WVC Home>Newsletter Table of Contents>Book Review: Designing CSS Web Pages
 

Book Review: Designing CSS Web Pages, by Christopher Schmitt

I’ve tinkered with Style Sheets on a couple of personal Web sites, but never needed to expand my knowledge much beyond the very basics. A recent volunteer opportunity changed all that. I not only needed to know more than the basics, I needed to know why.

This book answers both needs admirably. The book is divided into five parts:

Part 1, “Starting Out”, looks into the issues associated with starting a Web design project and preparing to design with CSS.

Part 2, “Using CSS”, covers the basics of CSS so you can see how it is a part of Dynamic HTML.

Part 3, “Advanced CSS”, shows how to create different style sheets for the same page.

Part 4, “Launching Progressive Design with CSS: Deconstructions”, deconstructs Web pages for a better understanding of how CSS was used to make the designs.

Part 5, “Appendixes”, contains four appendixes: Formatting Exercises, CSS 2 Reference Material, HTML 4.01 Reference Material, and a conversion guide for HTML to XHTML.

The tone of the book is refreshing, like the author is sitting down and talking with you, rather than talking down to you. There is a companion website, as well (http://www.cssbook.com/) that has all the downloadable code samples used in the books, recommended reading, and reviews of CSS and HTML authoring tools.

The examples in the book show the “before” HTML with no CSS and the “after” HTML with CSS. While presenting the CSS rules, the author usually describes the reason for utilizing a particular rule and discusses exactly how to implement it.

The deconstructions of web pages in Chapters 8, 9, and 10 touch on several different styles: business publishing, independent publishing, and underground styles. The business publishing section covers company news pages, an e-commerce shopping cart, and a page from an online magazine. A personal site and an e-zine are the focus of the independent publishing section, and underground styles looks at how technologies like SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) can help with web design.

Don’t forget to check out the formatting exercises! There are 50 exercises, covering the presentation of text, paragraphs, and headlines using CSS.

ISBN: 0-7357-1263-8
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Copyright: 2003
First Edition: October 2002

Rachel Houghton is a lone writer at Cypress Semiconductor in Beaverton, OR, with a focus in Framemaker, Acrobat and Windows online help. She can be reached at stc@rhoughton.com.