Cascading styles sheets also known as CSS is a very important part of any web page or web site design. However, even with 3.0 of the CSS specification just around the corner and even with today’s browsers being more standards complaint than any time in the past CSS is not as easy and some times not as logical as it could or should be. Add in that some browsers even today require some workarounds to get some things working correctly in them and what you have is an important technology that has a decent learning curve. Fortunately we have books like The Art and Science of CSS Cover to help us.

This soft cover book shows you some very creative, flexible, user friendly, browser friendly, platform friendly and disabled person friendly way of doing useful things on your web pages. While it doesn’t cover layer based column layouts (a real shame, they do a fantastic job of explaining the how and why’s for each of the projects in the book.) I have sat down and went through all of their projects and have been very surprised at just how simple, elegant and browser friendly they are.

Projects in this book include:

Headings
Images
Backgrounds
Navigation
Forms
Rounded Corners
Tables

Headings:

In this chapter, Cameron Adams will show you how to use image and Flash replacement to gain unlimited creativity in designing headings, while retaining the page’s accessibility across all browsers.

Images:

Jina Bolton will teach you stunning ways to display your images as she walks you through a number of attractive examples. You’ll learn to create a photo album, as well as to successfully place introductory and in-content images within your pages. The techniques of applying borders, padding, typography, and colors to best present your work are covered in detail in this chapter. You’ll also discover effective ways to style those all-important captions.

Backgrounds:

You’ve probably already found that CSS has significantly affected the way you use web page backgrounds. Here David Johnson will explain the properties you’ll use on a daily basis to transfer your design visions into light-weight markup and CSS. You’ll then work through a case study for a fictional project, in which you’ll create a great-looking design that’s well supported by all modern browsers. Finally, you’ll look in to the future to predict the new background capabilities that CSS 3 will bring.

Navigation:

Navigation is crucial to your users’ experience of your web site. Steve Smith will reveal the secrets of successful navigation through a case study involving a fictional design client. You’ll build both the basic and advanced applications of the main navigation styles in use today, including horizontal, vertical, and tabbed navigation menus, and discover how you can use CSS styling to make your navigation both beautiful and usable.

Forms:

Forms are quiet achievers of the web page. In this chapter Cameron Adams will help you ensure that your forms are available to all users -- even those employing assistive technology. You’ll learn how to create an attractive form that will allow for the correct and effective labeling, grouping, layout, and styling of your form elements. Forms needn’t be just a tedious necessity--as you’ll learn in this chapter, they can be presented in a way that enhances your site’s overall impact.

Rounded Corners:

Those sharp corners on HTML content boxes have been the bane of many a web designer’s life for years. But, CSS has changed all that, as Steve Smith explains. Flexibility is the key---horizontal, vertical, or even a combination of both forms--to creating rounded corners for your boxes with some straightforward styling, The achievement of rounded corners does hold traps for the unwary, including unsympathetic browsers, but you’ll find that taking a few small precautions detailed in this chapter will help you avoid them.

Tables:

Tables have received a new lease on life in the CSS era -- while they’ve finally been freed from misuse as a layout element, they retain enormous potential as presenters of data. Jonathan Snook will demonstrate how you can use CSS to create exciting, colorful tables, which will work successfully across browsers. You’ll also be invited to envision the future, in which the advent of wide use of CSS 3 will create even more scope for creative tables.

Having worked through all of the projects in this book I can say that I learned a lot of interesting and useful tips and tricks that not only applies to the subjects of forms, backgrounds, etc. but to other areas of web site and web page design. Some are more applicable to other areas of design than others but they have all given me ideas… ideas I can’t wait to explore.

If you’re new to web design or have been doing it for sometime and just want to learn new modern ways of doing basic things like navigation, backgrounds and more this is the book for you. It is very nicely laid out and designed, easy to read and follow and instead of glossing over what its telling you to do they explain why they are having you do it so you really do learn.