Customer Reviews

Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Product arrived in good time and in excellent condition. It was sold as used but it could easy qualify for new. I recommend the book and the seller. Thanks and keep up the good work.

Be

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.

I really loved this book and learned a lot on CSS with it. I was tempted to put a 4 or 4.5 for one thing though: it's hard to use it as a reference once you have finished it and want to come back to review a way to do something. I suppose his pocket reference would be better for this.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!!