Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Mastering CSS — A Book Review

May 17, 2006

Books · CSS · Design (Web)

Last week, I bought CSS Mas­tery by Andy Budd. I have been work­ing with CSS for page lay­out for about 3 years. The first year was mainly learn­ing through tuto­ri­als from Macro­me­dia and trial and error. I also spent time away work­ing on fund rais­ing for my min­istry role with Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ. About a year ago I imple­mented my first site using CSS and XHTML for lay­out. Since then, I have done about 5 more designs includ­ing sev­eral for this site, now using ver­sion 2.5. I would con­sider my CSS knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence as inter­me­di­ate. So I was excited to get this book and improve my skills.

And I have not been dis­ap­pointed. I have only read a cou­ple of chap­ters of the book, but it has already been very help­ful. The first chap­ter alone was worth it for me. I went back and rewrote the code for a site that I have been work­ing on. Because I had a bet­ter grasp of some foun­da­tional prin­ci­ples, I was able to imple­ment bet­ter cod­ing which cut down on the amount of code and need­less div tags. I appre­ci­ated all the tips that Andy gave on struc­tur­ing, plan­ning, orga­niz­ing and main­tain­ing stylesheets. I learned so much from only 25 pages. And I was able to imme­di­ately imple­ment what I learned.

This morn­ing I read the sec­ond chap­ter on the visual for­mat­ting model (box model and posi­tion­ing) while wait­ing for new tires to be installed on my car. I was rest­less with ideas as I gained a bet­ter grasp on these foun­da­tional con­cepts. I can’t wait to start using this knowl­edge to build bet­ter lay­outs and imple­ment bet­ter solu­tions. I just barely got into the next chap­ter on back­ground images and image replace­ment. My mouth is water­ing with antic­i­pa­tion of what I am going to learn next. I can’t wait to learn more and using it in practice.

This is the most prac­ti­cal book on CSS that I have read or looked at. I have tried to work through some oth­ers books that are mostly exer­cises. I gain some insights here and there. But this book has taught me so much and really filled in my foun­da­tional knowl­edge so that I can take my CSS to the next level. This is going to be one of the books that stays on my shelf for quick reference.