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Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional

Posted by Johan on November 6th, 2006.


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This CSS book entitled Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional is written by Simon Collison, a seasoned web designer, best known for his articles on his own blog collylogic.com.

We all have to start somewhere, haven’t we? And learn the tricks along the way. Learning CSS is not that easy. First you need to grasp what CSS is all about, how the cascade works and specifity. If that already sounds like an extraterrestrial language, just keep on reading. This is the theoretical side but how to implement it: the pragmatic side - CSS techniques. Well I have got a book for you novices!

bookcover of Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional

Book info

Summary

No wonder that the first chapters have titles like The core of CSS!
Gradually Simon tackles each aspect of CSS development: starting off with an explanation of building blocks with CSS, dealing with text, images and backgrounds, building a site navigation, styling tables and forms. With all that knowledge under your belt - you are ready to build lay-outs. The last chapter is a case study: converting a graphic mock-up into a CSS styled page template.

Criticism

I think the title of the book is a little misleading. This book offers a novice to learn CSS development from a professional perspective. When I first read the book - this came directly to mind: how well it was written and subsequently how easy it was to follow.

Mr. Collison uses real examples to illustrate howto design web pages with common CSS techniques. Good thing is that Collison links CSS development to basics of semantics, usability, accessibility and using web standards. You see a lot of HOWTODOBEST’s here. Practical knowledge is golden!! Every tip is!

Simon Collison knows how to build websites with web standards and solid CSS development from a professional point of view. Over the last years when CSS-based websites started to emerge, Simon was faced as many designers (including me) with the numerous inconsistencies in all browsers. When we opened our styled pages in Internet Explorer 6 or Safari 1.0 or Firefox 0.9!! - we saw at times a real mess and broken lay-outs. Every browser has its quirks. Come in hacks and filters: Style cheats.

It is true that anyone can learn CSS fast, just like HTML. But developing ( read: producing) websites with CSS can get easily very complex when one is not familiar with best practices. Best CSS practices allow us to build our web pages in a logical structured manner - a means to separate content from presentation. As a designer we are confronted with solving design problems. Working with CSS is no different, Simon tries to explain that CSS offers great flexibility to the designer, you can design print versions of your page, re-use styles and convert your whole graphic layout into a standards-compliant web page with stylesheets. If you read carefully, he offers the reader a lot of handy tips and tricks to make development with stylesheets a lot easier.

Of course browsers get updated, and require us to adopt our development strategies for future browsers, and we need to keep an eye on new media like mobile devices. Fortunately, we have a ever growing network of interface designers and developers that build websites with CSS. The design community has put a lot of effort in trying to offer pragmatic approaches to solve complexities when confronted with developing websites with CSS.

Simon Collison has documented a lot of the hard work done over the years and so did others to make the life easier of future CSS developers - that is what he did when writing this book.
A good kick start for all people that want to delve into CSS development.

Who should get this book?

For starters, someone who knows absolutely nothing about developing websites with CSS. Further, I would personally recommend this book for the following groups of people:

  • All graphic designers still struggling with either tables and probably creating web designs in general with CSS.
  • People that have fooled around with CSS - read amateurs and still have a lot of practical questions. It can be frustrated sometimes to make a CSS layout work - does that ring a bell to anyone?
  • People that wonder what is the missing glue between best CSS practices and good looking (yeah styled!), easy to maintain web pages.

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    4 Responses to Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional

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    […] This book offers a novice to learn CSS development from a professional perspective. When I first read the book - this came directly to mind: how well it was written and subsequently how easy it was to follow.

    […]

    Johan
    November 8th, 2006
    #

    I am reading this book now and i would call myself a beginner with CSS, i’ve toyed with the basics such as font styling, colors etc but not really placement or the meat and potatoes yet. I find this book very informative and I have learned some great stuff thus far. I am on chapter 4 “text” and i have learned some really cool things so far, can’t wait to read the rest of the book.

    Might i recommend reviewing CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Cameron Moll. This looks like a more advanced book but i want to make sure before i got ahead and purchase it that its not just another variant of this book. Thanks

    Trebor Nodrog
    November 8th, 2006
    #

    I’ve yet to find any real list of ‘JavaScript Heuristics’ related to the use of JavaScript in a site. However, there are methods of implementing JavaScript in ways that improve both the overall user experience as well as general site accessibility, and so I think developing a couple of rules specific to that would be useful. A set of JavaScript heuristics I created for a recent usability review included. Does the site navigation work with JavaScript disabled? Does key site functionality fail when JavaScript is disabled? Does the site use (script based) pop-ups? Does the site use device independent scripts? No doubt there are others that could be included here, but I think it’s a good start… Can you add to this?

    bishan
    July 19th, 2007
    #

    bishan,

    Ever been inspired by http://www.31three.com/ ?

    ; ) 

    Andrew Faulkner
    July 19th, 2007
    #

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