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the Zen of CSS design

Even with the frequent pomposity and self-serving plugs in this book on CSS-based web-design, there are some incredibly useful tools for the web-designer presented herein, meriting the at-times tedious reading. Be fore-warned, however, this book is really a superficial covering of CSS and design. Look for real meat-and-potatoes elsewhere!

by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag

3 Stars

Recommended

Even with the frequent pomposity and self-serving plugs in this book on CSS-based web-design, there are some incredibly useful tools for the web-designer presented herein, meriting the at-times tedious reading. Be fore-warned, however, this book is really a superficial covering of CSS and design. Look for real meat-and-potatoes elsewhere!

In mid-2003 author Dave Shea published a web-site, CSS Zen Garden after much deliberation on how to generate interest in the then fledgling Web-Standards Compliant movement. CSS Zen Garden employed the same HTML coding using a variety of user-defined Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to let users re-theme the site in creative and interesting ways. CSS Zen Garden is now a recognized source of inspiration, and indirectly – information, for web-designers the world over.

The Zen of CSS Design is based entirely upon the web-site and focuses on 36 of the themes that are currently hosted there, focusing on Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects, and Construction. In all truth, however, the treatment given to each theme is cursory, at best, and just about every chapter recommends “checking out the CSS on the web-site yourself.” It also seemed quite pretentious that 4 out of the 36 discussed designs were by author Dave Shea himself.

Interestingly, the information I found most useful from the book was information not actually in the book. The book is peppered with links and outside references to articles, tutorials, and resources to deal with CSS hacks, methods, and techniques while only giving them cursory mention. These links were, to me, the REAL meat-and-potatoes of the instruction and learning. The pragmatic approach of this book would have been greatly enhanced if permission was obtained to make a compendium, of sorts, for this external information, rather than merely serving a source for teasers.

There were two parts of the book I found useful, Chapter 7, which reconstructs some of the elements of a few themes, and an appendix which provides some tips on debugging CSS. If you’re reallyinterested in learning CSS techniques for web-design, I strongly recommend reading a more in-depth resource, like O’Reilly’s CSS Cookbook, 2nd Edition instead. About the only audience I’d recommend the Zen of CSS design to would be CSS Zen Garden Enthusiasts. The usefulness of this book simply does NOT justify the $40 price-tag.