Book Review: The Zen of CSS Design
February 21, 2005
The Zen of CSS Design uses websites (derived from the CSS Zen Garden website,) to teach CSS based layout along with a smattering of other web design topics.
NOTE: many of the techniques described in this book depend on hacks that we now know will cause big problems with the next Web Standards compliant version of IE – IE7 will break many common CSS hacks. So don’t buy this book for the CSS advice since it is riddled with the use of hacks.
If you’re really into the ‘design’ aspect of web design, you may want to consider this book.
Note: this is not a beginners book, you need to be comfortable with CSS and HTML/XHTML.
This book reminds of Eric Meyers glossy books on CSS except:
- This book deals with design principles as they relate to web design. Where Meyer’s books are more about the ‘nuts and bolts’ of CSS layout.
- The websites showcased are stunning.
Pros:
- A great looking book showcasing stunning websites.
- Provides solutions for many of the bugs found in CSS based layout.*
- Includes topics such as usability and basic design principles.
* This is a double-edge sword: I simply don’t like relying on hackery to layout my pages.
Cons:
- The writing style is wordy – they could have been more concise.
- The book covers CSS techniques that can’t be used in real web design because Internet Explorer doesn’t support the techniques … I just don’t like ivory tower nonsense.
- Many of key layouts depend on deficiencies in the browsers – deficiencies that will be fixed (at some point in time …) and (when fixed,) may well ‘break’ the layouts.
