Another CSS/Web Design book from Friends of Ed. After reading and loving Web Standards Solutions (see my review), I was really looking forward to this book.
Unfortunately, I was mostly disappointed. Not that this isn’t a good CSS book, but it’s 2 years after Web Standards Solutions was published and it’s covering basically the same ground: lists, backgrounds, and forms. The new information wasn’t that interesting to me:
Image Replacement
I’ve read a lot about image replacement, i.e. ways to replace text like an h1 at the top of a page with a graphic of the company’s logo. I’m just not convinced that the benefit (searchable text at the top of the page, more accessible than using an alt tag) outweighs the hassle (lots of different hacks to make sure it works without css, without javascript, in the readers for the blind, etc).
Hacks and Filters
I don’t like to hack my CSS. I’d much rather add either an extra div or an extra css rule or two and make it work in all browsers. That way I don’t have any surprises with the newer browsers.
Bugs and Bug Fixing
Every bug list seems to be missing the bug that I’m currently wrestling with. Same thing here.
Plus Side: Case Studies
The case studies were interesting for seeing how a particular web designer approaches a project, but felt kind of tacked on.
In the end, this wasn’t the book for me. I didn’t need the information on the advanced techniques and I already knew the intermediate techniques.
You can check out CSS Mastery (and other web design books) in the Cornercode Amazon Store.
