Good CSS Books?

August 16, 2005 9:30 AM

What are some good intermediate to advanced CSS resources in dead-tree form?

Have you used any CSS books that you could recommend to someone that's already familiar with separation of presentation and data, what CSS is, what it isn't, and so on?

I'm looking for books that contain detailed examples that answer questions along the lines of "So how do you position your footer relative to this paragraph, but only under these conditions?"

It seems like all the books I've picked up are either much too simplistic ("How do you change the color of words? What about these words? And these?") or they fall off into the realm of glossaries and indexes. I don't need either of these, what do I look for?

Finally, if you have some really good web resources, I'd love to see those too... keeping in mind the level of stuff I'm looking for.

Thanks!

posted by odinsdream to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I'm currently between newbie and intermediate but these are my choices:

Charles Wyke-Smith's book, Stylin' with CSS had a good review from Zeldman. I found it to be an excellent read, even though the target sites built following the tutorial are not very inspirational and there are quite a few errors. It might be worth waiting for the (hopefully better edited) second edition.

Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology is never far from my side. The subtitle "101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks" might lead you to think that it's not an organised read but dammit, every time I need to look something up I find the answer in seconds. Kudos to the indexer too.

You can download the first 4 chapters of Andrews' book from Sitepoint (if you can put up with 4 or more follow up emails).
posted by ceri richard at 9:57 AM on August 16, 2005

I'd check out Bullet Proof Web Design and Web Standard solutions by Dan Cederholm. Both can be found at Amazon. I'm at your level and both were enormously helpful. Also, Stylin' with CSS is another good one.
posted by captainscared at 9:59 AM on August 16, 2005

Second vote for Cederholm's books. The latest (Bullet Proof Web Design) is a great read, beautiful, and very helpful. Highly recommended.
posted by purephase at 10:26 AM on August 16, 2005

I highly recommend Eric Meyer's books: http://www.ericmeyeroncss.com/
Very practical, solutions-based for the beyond the beginner stage.
posted by lrivers at 10:58 AM on August 16, 2005

With the exception of Bulletproof Web Design, I have all the above books and will second the fact that they are all excellent. I would also throw in Dave Shea's CSS Zen Garden book, The Zen of CSS Design. Excellent as well.
posted by isotope at 11:23 AM on August 16, 2005

Spam Gourmet is wonderful for dealing with nonsense like SitePoint's "mail you the sample" stuff. You will sometimes find sites that won't let you use spamgourmet.com as a recipient address but they have dozens of alternates; I've yet to find a site that wouldn't take one of them.
posted by phearlez at 1:29 PM on August 16, 2005

Have to add some props for Eric Meyer as well. I have and like "Eric Meyer on CSS"
posted by neodem at 10:42 AM on August 17, 2005