Product Description
There are several other books on the market that serve as in-depth technical guides or reference books for CSS. None, however, take a more hands-on approach and use practical examples to teach readers how to solve the problems they face in designing with CSS – until now. Eric Meyer provides a variety of carefully crafted projects that teach how to use CSS and why particular methods were chosen. The web site includes all of the files needed to complete the tutorials … More >>
Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design
Tags: Design, Eric, eric meyer, Language, Mastering, Meyer, reference books, web design
#1 by Eric J. Tischler on May 20, 2010 - 7:47 pm
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.
Rating: 2 / 5
#2 by Anonymous on May 20, 2010 - 7:56 pm
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.
Rating: 2 / 5
#3 by Anonymous on May 20, 2010 - 8:28 pm
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.
Rating: 2 / 5
#4 by Foti Massimo on May 20, 2010 - 9:17 pm
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Anonymous on May 20, 2010 - 11:36 pm
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.
Rating: 2 / 5