Rating: 
Summary: Best improvement of my skills this year
Review: I have used alittle CSS on my pages before, but Eric shows how to take full advantage and explains the benefits of implementing more CSS styles than I have ever thought possible. I have cut the amount of code on the pages by at least 20% and at the same time added more style and control to the pages. I started using some of his styles within a week of picking up the book. I was stuck in one area, I down loaded the lessons. It is the easiest way to see how the code effects the pages and what changes and additions I needed to make. I can't say enough about how easy the styles and the code are to follow with the down loaded pages.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: 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:
Summary: Best CSS Book Out There!
Review: I have read quite a few CSS books and this is by far the most practical I have in my library. Forget the 2000 page paperweights which may be a great reference but are not a good guide in the practical application of CSS. This book shows you how to use CSS and covert your old table based layouts into CSS based layouts. I think every developer should have this book in their library.
Rating:
Summary: Well Written and Easy On the Eyes
Review: Wanna learn CSS with a beautifully illustrated, simple, and technically accurate tutorial book? Look no further! Eric and the review team have crafted a wonderful book on CSS. Why would you buy it? 1) CSS is the next step up in web design. It's fluid, flexible, can make your pages load faster, and can be MUCH easier to work with than screwing around with tables and placeholder images. (It is not perfect, however, so you may only use it to enhance table based layouts for now.) 2) You'll be able to make your page more appealing to people and search engines. 3) This is a tutorial book. You can get a reasonably good handle on CSS if you are not already an expert. 4) It not only walks you through the exercises in words, but presents visual representations of what your example pages will look like. 5) Lots of books accomplish #4 to some degree. This is an oversized color volume which makes it much easier to work with. 6) New Riders makes good stuff. They are consistently one of the best publishers along with O'Reilly. This book is no different. There is no "quick reference" in this book for all the CSS markups you will learn in the tutorials and the index could have been a little bit better. There were a couple little things that didn't seem to work as they were supposed to, but 99% of the time the exercises turned out perfectly. Overall, this book is about as good as it gets. In the nature of fair disclosure, New Riders provided a complimentary copy of the book for review a couple of months ago. It has gotten and will continue to get plenty of use.
Rating:
Summary: Looking over the shoulder of a master
Review: No book can be perfect for everyone. This is not a beginner's book, nor is it an exhaustive reference. What it is, is a workshop in which the reader gets to see into the mind of a CSS expert while he goes through a number of redesigns. Mr. Myers takes us through redesigns, one step at a time with numerous screen shots so we can see exactly what each new style does. With an accessible, informal voice, he also explains the reasons for each decision so we can begin to think like a style sheet pro. As a tutorial for web designers with a bit of CSS knowledge who want to become experts this book may be just the ticket. A great niche book.
Rating:
Summary: The CSS guru speaks
Review: Eric Meyer has made a career out of teaching web professionals and amateurs alike how to fully exploit the powerful design features of cascading style sheets. There's proabbly no one out there who knows more about the quirks of how modern browsers implement CSS and how best to deal with these infuriating inconsistencies. This book gives clear, concise work-along examples of how to use CSS to its fullest advantage in your website. Highly recommended to anyone who has finally realized that FONT tags have gone the way of the dodo.
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Summary: Real World Use Of CSS - Awesome!!!
Review: This is the best book on CSS, period. It is not a reference, and in fact it would be beneficial to have a reference on hand while reading it. However there is no book within miles of this one in describing the power of CSS for use in everyday web design. Most books try to list the specifications CSS with hopelessly simple examples that leave one with little knowledge of how CSS can be used to design web sites that are complex and elegant. This book shows one how to, any why it is important to, unlearn all the HTML work-arounds we have been using for years. No more transparent gif's to organize empty space. No more tables nested in tables nested in tables. Brilliant work. Now I know why they developed CSS. You cannot go wrong with this author and this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book -- Learn what CSS is really about
Review: This book isn't your normal "this is the tag, this is what it does" type of thing. It uses REAL examples.. actually useful examples that can be implemented with ease. I think my favorite chapter is Project 7 -- "Making an Input form Look Good". I think that making input forms are the biggest challenge for web designers (they can look SO ugly). This chapter takes a generic form and turns it into a well designed page, just by adding a little CSS! I learned a great deal by reading this book, and I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have Book
Review: If you really want to use CSS, but were put off by a lack of practical guides, then your ship has come in. If you think that perhaps this is going to be a geeky, bleeding edge trip that ignores the cross-browser question, then you're wrong. Eric Meyer does CSS that you can use now- not next year. Get it. You'll be very glad you did. -
Al Sparber
Rating:
Summary: The Aha! Book
Review: If like me you're the kind of (X)HTML coder who expects to develop finger-cancer from hitting "refresh" every 30 seconds in your eight different browsers as you change the same CSS rule over and over and over again, trying to get it to work in every window, then you, like me, will enjoy a similarly repetitive experience as you read this book: that of exclaiming "Aha!" and "Brilliant!" over and over and over again. Don't be deceived by the glossy paper and pretty pictures: This is a book of real-work-oriented _solutions_. Each project gave me several ways to solve current snags I was hitting in my code. Each of them also inspired me with the confidence to create more ambitious layouts. Although it's well-written and entertaining--a page-turner!--I haven't quite finished the book yet because I keep putting it down to tinker some more with the coding project that formerly had me stumped and demoralized. Then I pick the book up to leaf back through to a project that solved another problem I'm having, and that reminds me of something else really cool in there that I want to try out, and so on: two pages forward, twenty pages back. Eventually I'll have to turn the computer off to finish reading. Note: This is not a book for beginners. Meyer assumes that you know how CSS works and have spent some time trying to use it. You needn't be a whiz, though, to appreciate it. Negatives? All I can think of is that I want it to be longer. And, in fact, it is: be sure to check out the bonus chapters at the book's web site; they're important. Oh, and the index could be more detailed, but it's not a big deal since the book is compact and well-organized enough to allow you to remember where you saw something useful. In short, if you use CSS, buy this book. Then you, too, can replace your repetitive refresh-clicking motion with a repetitive forehead-smacking one.
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