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The Ultimate CSS Reference

Posted by tripwire45 on · 6 comments
Linux-Tutorial.info; By James Pyles 		Mail this story
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According to the Book Description blurb: "Stop wasting time doing Internet searches only to find inaccurate, out-of-date, or incomplete information. CSS: The Ultimate Reference includes all the ins-and-outs you need to know including compatibility information for all major browsers, lists of useful hacks, known bugs in CSS, and much more - all presented in a beautiful, full color layout that will have you coming back over and over again". Ok. I know plenty of folks who want to learn more about CSS and are indeed frustrated by online resources. The Olsson and O'Brien book promises what a many CSS books promise...to the the "end-all-and-be-all" of CSS resources. Let's have a look and see if it can live up to this claim.

To facilitate the writing of this review (and because this book is so popular that there wasn't a spare hardcopy of it to send my way), I was given access to an online version (and sworn to secrecy regarding the security account to get "in"). I say that because I SitePoint traditionally produces very visually beautiful books and my interpretation of the online content won't quite reflect what you'll see when you hold the book in your hands.



I'll trust that the screen captures, other visuals, and code samples are all faithfully reproduced online just as they appear on the printed page (I guess I'm just that kind of guy). Part of what makes any book on markup languages, coding, and programming successful is what you see. Since CSS is specifically "presentational" by its very nature, what you see is all the more important. As I've mentioned, visuals are part of SitePoint's specialty, and I wasn't disappointed in full color captures of both style sheet code and the results they produced.

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Comments (6)

gus3 ·
For all my CSS needs, I use the W3C's published standard at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
dinotrac ·
I'm very proud of your intrepid sense of adventure and comprehension skills.

I will use W3C docs when root canals and anesthesia free heart-surgery are my alternatives, otherwise...
Sander_Marechal ·
Some of the W3C docs are pretty goot to read. Admittingly, the CSS docs isn't one of those. But I use the XSLT and XPath W3C reference quite a lot. It's pretty easy to read.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath
dinotrac ·
XSLT and XPath docs aren't bad.

Not only that, lots of the alternative doc isn't very good.
purplewizard ·
Considering the original complaint seem to be about the poor and outdated documentation around the internet I find it strange to suggest that the W3C source documentation isn't better. It is for one up to date, two more complete and three only sometimes too bad (perhaps once you become familiar). So given you are getting two of the three as good as they come it has to compare favorably with anything but good or better books and documents.
gus3 ·
@purplewizard:

Don't forget "four, the published standard." Whatever the W3C publishes, warts and all, is the standard.

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