HTML is the skeleton of the web and CSS is the muscles and flesh. In the old days we didn’t use or use very much CSS in our web site designs. Thank goodness that we have since seen the light and now design web sites that are not only good looking, but easy to update and maintain and that is thanks to CSS.

The only downside is that CSS isn’t as easy to learn and use as one might hope. Especially when you move away from table based designs and go in to layer or <div> based layouts. Instead of having for example a simple and direct way of centering a table or something like that you have to jump through hoops and actually use the center option for text with funky margins. There is in my opinion much to be improved with CSS. It could be a lot more straight forwards and simpler than what it is. I guess what I am saying is that it seems you have to use hacks to get somen things to work right. Why can't they have a CSS tag that you use to center a table, why does it have to be so hard and confusing? And, then you also have the tags that don't see to work like you want. For example try setting the height of a table or layer using CSS or anything else for that matter, it just doens't work right. Now some of this falls on the browser makers, but a lot also falls on those that design the various versions of CSS.

Personally, I think CSS and its design, structure, etc. isn’t controlled by normal people, but programmers who for their own purposes seem to take great pleasure in making things confusing and un-intuitive and they do a very good job of that. Myself I hope that some day the web and the design of web pages will be exactly like laying out a page in something like Adobe InDesign. But, that I fear this is some ways off, even programs like Dreamweaver don't make page layout that easy. At least not desktop publishing easy.

In the mean time what we need are good books on CSS that will help us not only with the simple basic things, but the more complex things like laying out a page or site using layers and CSS to control and style these layers. Transcending CSS is just such a book.

In this book you’ll discover how to implement highly original designs through visual demonstrations of the creative possibilities using markup and CSS. You’ll learn to use a new design workflow, build prototypes that work well for designers and all team members, use grids effectively, visualize markup and discover every phase of the transcendent design process, from working with the latest browsers to the incorporation of CSS2 to collaborating with team members effectively and much more.

Contents:

Introducing Transcendent CSS

The Principles of Transcendent CSS

What Makes Transcendent CSS Possible Now?

Designing From the Content Out

Semantics Is Meaning

Marking Up the World

Time to Process What You Have Learned

Searching For A Perfect Workflow

Gathering Your Content

Working with Wireframes

Improving the Approach with the Grey Box Method

Creating Static Designs

Using Interactive Prototypes

Following Best Practices for Interactive Prototyping

Practice the Process

Putting It All Together

Introducing Grid-Base Design

Grids In Contemporary Web Design

Looking For Grids Outside The Web

Bring New Grids to Web Design

Finding Inspiration Unexpected Places

Fine Art Activities

The Fine Art of Web Design

Transcendent CSS

Css3 (Third Time Lucky)

Advanced Layout

Concluding Remarks

This full color book is loaded with samples for both showing the CSS design and well as for the CSS markup. It is easy to read and takes a unique approach to CSS uses in web design. This is more of an instructional book and not a CSS reference book. If you want to know what all of the CSS tags do this isn’t the book for you. If you want to learn to use CSS to control and improve your sites then this is the book for you. Very nicely done.