Cascading Style Sheets 2.0: Programmer's Reference [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

What it is...
A really good, thorough, reference book on CSS2. This guy knows his stuff and presents it clearly and without any clutter. It is laid out so you can easily find every element, property, and atribute there is. Sure you could go to the World Wide Web Consortium's web site for the info, but when you're in the middle of coding - a good REFERENCE book is still tops for getting info fast. And in my opinion, the layout of the book makes more sense than the w3's web site (though it is valuable too).

To those just starting with CSS-
This book may be hard to grasp at first. Buy it anyway. Find a few web sites to get the basics down because this will be the book you'll want to have after your first week, when what you need is a reference and not a dumbed down overworded tutorial with examples that don't fit your application anyway.

Eric's experience in the application of this advanced technique and his participation in the Web community is expressed in the organization and clarity of this book. No hand-holding tutorials here, just the facts and the context which gives those facts meaning.

And if that is not compact enough for you, Chapter 8 "CSS2 Quick Reference," condenses the material even more. Also handy is the lengthy chart on browser compatibility.

I can only fault the book for not going beyond its purpose. That is, the book covers the CSS specification properties only. In particular, styles implemented by Internet Explorer, which may be extremely handy yet not officially approved, are not covered.

Unfortunately there are very few illustrations or screen shots to help you grasp difficult ideas, which sometimes results in long and wordy descriptions of the various properties. I found myself skimming over such busy paragraphs because I knew the idea they were trying to describe, but anyone unfamiliar with the ideas may find themselves getting frustrated trying to work out exactly what it is that is being said. A few more well placed illustrations would have made it easier to use.

Another thing that annoyed me was the repetition of paragraphs while detailing the properties. While I can understand the need to repeat the paragraphs (after all, it is a reference book!), it did get rather tired, particularly when looking up related properties or attributes.

Despite these little annoyances, it makes an ideal quick reference book. The headings and text are clear, the pages easy to scan and alphabetical ordering makes it easy to find attributes by name. There is no obvious distinction between CSS1 and CSS2, but important differences in implementation of the two are pointed out when relevant.