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CSS Cookbook
by Christopher Schmitt

Publisher: Sams Buy it Now! 

ISBN: 0596005768
Format: Paperback, 272pp
CD: NO

The "CSS cookbook" by Christopher Schmitt has only about 250 pages, and consists of 10 chapters, each containing a series of recipes. By glancing at the table of contents, one notices that the book tries to cover most of the beginner to intermediate CSS questions typically raised. The chapters are: Web Typography, Page Elements, Links and Navigation, Lists, Forms, Tables, Page Layouts, Print, Hacks and Workarounds, and Designing with CSS.

The author's writing style is very concise. The examples are compact and to the point with a lot of screenshots inserted. However, the writer gives you all the useful information without making it dry or giving in to jokes and punch-in-the-arm commentary. For web authors, who do not want to read pages about the history of CSS, the CSS Cookbook cuts straight through the theory to provide hundreds of useful examples and CSS code recipes that web authors can use immediately to format their web pages. Each recipe is a script, program, command, or piece of code for implementing within a large part of a whole.

The style of the book is to identify a specific issue/problem and then tackle it by giving a solution. All the necessary information/explanation needed is then given while discussing the provided solution. This approach provides the reader with the understanding they need to customize the code for their own purposes. For many of the problems the author also includes a "See Also" section that points one to further reading.

Examples range from the simpler ones: large first letters, highlighted first lines, fancy pull quotes to the more complex: collapsible menus, tab-style horizontal menus, the box model hack, three column CSS layouts, hanging list indents. One great example is the elegant use of styled tables to build a nice-looking calendar.

The way this book is broken down may take a little getting used to, since the focus is more on individual approaches to design ideas, rather than a master list of common complete page layouts. However, the last part of the book gives some great information about complete designs, compatibility considerations, and a bit of theory about using CSS effectively.The writer also does a good job balancing the argument about when to use tables versus divs.

Although the book is about CSS (and CSS 2.1), the author makes frequent use of HTML and even JavaScript. Browser differences are not ignored, and where these exist there is usually discussion of how to get round them. Coverage of browser differences extends across both across different browsers and across versions of browsers. For those that have been stung by browser incompatibilities this book can save you a lot of pain in developing CSS on multiple browsers. There is a lot of detail in the recipes on where the browser rendering quirks are and how to create CSS that works on all browsers. That being said, this book is aimed at developers who know a bit about CSS (and JavaScript) but need some reference to solve specific problems, and who wish to view alternate methods to common situations. While this book will not teach you CSS, it is a great desk reference to jog your memory, or reveal some new trick.

The book's compact recipes may also be its shortcoming for intermediate to advanced CSS coders looking to pick up something new. Reading on the web, I see that most people hold it against him for producing a 250 page book. The expectation was that a 350-400 page book with more recipes and examples would have been better. Personally, after reading through, I am more than satisfied with the book. The simplicity, the topics covered and descriptive recipes and examples is what most develpers like myself look for when trying to solve a problem. This book is definitely a "must have" backpocket manual for any web author especially if you are a coder who does not focus on the front end.