This book, written by Dan Cederholm, offers very practical, how-to instructions for building standards-compliant web sites that separate content from presentation. Ready to scrap tables in favor of CSS-based layouts? You can read this book to learn how to do it and why you should do it. Some of the other basic elements covered include styling lists for navigation and presentation, styling forms, handling backgrounds efficiently, image replacement techniques, and much more.

There is too much great content to cover here, but what you basically get is all of the basics needed to combine CSS and XHTML to create a standards-compliant web site. This book is a great place to start and I highly recommend reading Dan’s other book after this one.

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Review of Web Standards Solutions- The Markup and Style Handbook

This book was written by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag, two great minds who help push Web Standards and cutting-edge design. I also have to add that I was fortunate enough to take a class taught by Molly at the University of Arizona a few years ago and I cannot recommend her enough.

The concept behind this book is to take some of the most beautiful and most innovative designs from the CSS Zen Garden and break them down, step-by-step, while pointing out challenges and solutions along the way. You will see many examples of taking CSS to the limits of browser compatibility (and dealing with the failings of Internet Explorer along the way). There is no doubt in my mind that you will feel more confident when it comes time to create a new CSS-based layout after seeing the way to solve various browser errors and markup challenges that can seem daunting at times.

I would not recommend this book for someone just getting started with CSS. I think this book is perfect for the designer who has built a pure CSS site or two and wants to add some polish or more advanced features to a new design. This book is also highly valuable as a source of graphic design inspiration and instruction. There are some chapters devoted to topics like typography and color as well.

Overall, this is a great book about design on the Web, no just CSS design. I consider this a must-have for your Web design bookshelf.

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Review of The Zen of CSS Design

I am also a big fan of Dan Cederholm’s other book, Web Standards Solutions. If you are new to CSS, you should probably read that one first as it is a bit more on the introductory level.

Overall, this is one of the best CSS books you will find. It’s not a code reference- you get to learn by real examples and work with real code. You will come away from this book with great tools at your disposal like flexible CSS menus and expandable boxes with rounded corners- things you can put to immediate use in your projects. I highly recommend it!

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Review of Bulletproof Web Design