{"id":18,"date":"2005-02-21T10:53:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-21T15:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2017-02-23T10:04:36","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:04:36","slug":"book-review-the-zen-of-css-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2005\/book-review-the-zen-of-css-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Zen of CSS Design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Zen of CSS Design uses websites (derived from the CSS Zen Garden website,)  to teach CSS based layout along with a smattering  of other web design topics.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE:<\/strong> many of the techniques described in this book  depend on hacks that we now know will cause big problems with the next Web Standards compliant version of IE &#8211; IE7 will break many common CSS hacks. So don&#8217;t buy this book for the CSS advice since it is riddled with the use of hacks.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re really into the &#8216;design&#8217; aspect of web design, you may want to consider this book.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note: <\/strong>this is not a beginners book, you need to be comfortable with CSS and HTML\/XHTML.<\/p>\n<p>This book reminds of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/bookReviews\/CSSBooks.jsp\">Eric Meyers glossy books<\/a> on CSS except:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This book deals with design principles as they relate to web design. Where Meyer&#8217;s books are more about the &#8216;nuts and bolts&#8217; of CSS layout.<\/li>\n<li>The websites showcased are stunning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwmontrealma-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0321303474&#038;fc1=000000&#038;=1&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> <strong>Pros:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A great looking book showcasing stunning websites.<\/li>\n<li>Provides solutions for many of the bugs found in CSS based layout.*<\/li>\n<li>Includes topics such as usability and basic design principles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>* This is a double-edge sword: <\/strong>I simply don&#8217;t like relying on hackery to layout my pages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cons:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The writing style is wordy &#8211; they could have been more concise.<\/li>\n<li>The book covers CSS techniques that can&#8217;t be used in real web design because Internet Explorer doesn&#8217;t support the techniques &#8230; I just don&#8217;t like ivory tower nonsense.<\/li>\n<li>Many of key layouts depend on deficiencies in the browsers &#8211; deficiencies that will be fixed (at some point in time &#8230;) and (when fixed,) may well &#8216;break&#8217; the layouts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Zen of CSS Design uses websites (derived from the CSS Zen Garden website,) to teach CSS based layout along with a smattering of other web design topics. NOTE: many of the techniques described in this book depend on hacks that we now know will cause big problems with the next Web Standards compliant version &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4751,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/4751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}