22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but a little buggy, Jan 11 2011
By Ghost - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout (Paperback)
The content of this book is very informative and it's nice to have all the techniques together in a single volume. However, the examples do not always work the way the author intended so hopefully an errata will be published very soon. Also, the code examples on the companion web site are incomplete; it would have been useful to have completed examples available for testing purposes.
30 of 35 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Worst Eric Meyer book, Feb 11 2011
By Dessie - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout (Paperback)
This is by far the worst Eric Meyer book ever. What were they thinking? This book recaps CSS techniques from Eric and others that have been in use for years! A majority if not all of this information is readily available on the internet and some of it is very old.
Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout
CSS3 is the biggest thing to hit the web and there are only a few pages dealing with CSS3. OK so the book should be about quality layout techniques. CSS3 will include columns and layered (multiple) backgrounds. I was blown away by the lack CSS3 subject matter. This is not a book for those who have been using CSS for some time (you will know this stuff or be able to find it on the web) nor is it a book for beginners.
There are several other books out there that are better. If you are wanting to learn CSS3 I would try the Visual Quick Start guide by Jason Cranford Teague. I do fault it, because the title is CSS3 and the book is not devoted to CSS3 alone.
I have the impression this book was just thrown together for the purpose of people like me who try to absorb as much information as possible.
Look else where for your CSS or CSS3 knowledge.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A perfect book for those just learning CSS, May 10 2011
By Webuquerque - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout (Paperback)
This is a very different sort of book by Eric Meyer. Not in subject matter, of course, but in tone and purpose. Instead of his previous rather pedantic and encyclopedic listing of every thing you might ever want to know about CSS, this book is light, humorous, and organized to be read from front to back.
If you've been paying attention to CSS for the last few years, most of this book will be old news to you. But the book isn't aimed for those already literate with CSS. It's meant to help the newbie learn enough to master the basics and go on to create some cool looks and layouts with CSS. Every chapter has lots of examples, screen shots, code, and advice.
The first section starts right at the beginning with a chapter on Tools such as Firebug and SelectORacle. Chapter 2 talks about every kind of selector with advice about what works best when there is more than one way to accomplish something. The second section of the book deals with Essentials. In the chapter called Tips you learn about things like unitless line-height values, image replacement, and list styles. The chapter called Layouts reviews float containment and explains layouts like faux columns, liquid bleach, the one true layout, fluid grids, and the holy grail. In the Effects chapter he explains how to create an effect like his complex spiral. He also explains CSS pop-ups, menus, rounded corners, sprites, sliding doors, parallax, ragged floats, and constrained images.
The final section of the book is Cutting Edge, in which he moves away from reviewing the foundation CSS knowledge of the past and jumps into new ideas. There's a chapter on Tables that shows new techniques for styling tables. He gives tips on using head, body and foot for table design and shows how to use a table to make a graph or provide data on a map. The final chapter is Cutting Edge. This chapter looks at HTML5, media queries, occasional children, occasional columns, RGBa, shadows, multiple backgrounds and transforms.
From a web education perspective, this would be an excellent book for teaching a CSS class.
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A Webuquerque community member review by Virginia DeBolt