This book is good to practice CSS. To be used before the Meyer's second one ("More Eric Meyer On CSS"). On the other hand, because it was written in 2002, it is a little obsolete for some techniques. The using of the 'table' tag for layout is still here. This is not the case in the second book which use the positionning... and sorry for my english !!!

I have found better books out there, but this one is okay. Good to get you started.

Awesome learn by example book IF you already have a little background in CSS, and even then if your knowledge is elementary you might be lost on some of the finer points. If it had a little more theory and explanations it would be a killer book, but I guess Eric Meyer didn't have patience enough for that. He is anyway a Master in CSS styling, no doubts about that, and the right author too look at for learning and inspiration. The book is structured around several projects that you see in the various developing stages from beginning to end in reasonably small steps. The explanations of what's going on are like what you would expect from a guru/designer/artist that is, far from complete and basic. Again is like you had the chance to peek over Eric's shoulder while he works, but he won't be bothered to lose too much of his time after you. But don't get me wrong, this book is a must have for anyone interested in CSS, even if I would not buy it now (it starts being a bit dated) but would wait for his next book that should come out this autumn.

Awesome learn by example book IF you already have a little background in CSS, and even then if your knowledge is elementary you might be lost on some of the finer points. If it had a little more theory and explanations it would be a killer book, but I guess Eric Meyer didn't have patience enough for that. He is anyway a Master in CSS styling, no doubts about that, and the right author too look at for learning and inspiration. The book is structured around several projects that you see in the various developing stages from beginning to end in reasonably small steps. The explanations of what's going on are like what you would expect from a guru/designer/artist that is, far from complete and basic. Again is like you had the chance to peek over Eric's shoulder while he works, but he won't be bothered to lose too much of his time after you. But don't get me wrong, this book is a must have for anyone interested in CSS, even if I would not buy it now (it starts being a bit dated) but would wait for his next book that should come out this autumn.

I wanted a quick crash course in CSS; instead this book gave me a comprehensive start that led me on a path to a solid foundation in designing with Cascading Style Sheets.

Attention to details, comprehensive and professional writing style, and superior clarity are just some of the strengths of this book. I only wish that more IT books were as easy to read as this one.

I wanted a quick crash course in CSS; instead this book gave me a comprehensive start that led me on a path to a solid foundation in designing with Cascading Style Sheets.

Attention to details, comprehensive and professional writing style, and superior clarity are just some of the strengths of this book. I only wish that more IT books were as easy to read as this one.

The first seen this book seems one more technical guide about CSS, but to the first contact realizes that it is a great reference based on needs to everyday of the web designer.
The book starts boarding how to initiate layout HTML transition for layout hybrid (still with the tables use but of optimized way), and with that goes gradually preparing the reader to think and to create the such wished Layout CSS (Tableless).
Besides talking about CSS he shows how to conceive a semantically correct code HTML and thus obtain a more organized and accessible structure.
This book boards the structure and presentation separation concept, positioning CSS, columns in CSS, leaves creation of alternative style, forms and effects presentation in links, lists and images.
The book Eric Mayer on CSS is one of the best references about CSS who already I saw, and can tell that he is indispensable in the web designer library.

Before skimming through "Eric Meyer on CSS" I expected an introductory level CSS tutorial book that would provide readers with step-by-step instructions on how to create efficient CSS layouts. The back cover lists standard concepts that are covered in the book in addition to an accurate depiction of Eric Meyer's professional experience level and expert ability with CSS [...]. Yet, after reading the introduction and beginning the first few chapters, I quickly learned this book is ideal for persons with a solid foundation in HTML and at least a basic understanding of CSS. For example, project 1 (i.e. chapter 1) illustrates how to remove HTML markup and replace it with CSS layout, but does not go into detail about the HTML markup and mentions CSS properties/terminology as a side note rather than main point.

I think a major selling point of "Eric Meyer on CSS" is its excellent project based approach to CSS; each project can be completed in a single session and built my proficiency and confidence upon chapter completion. Additionally, the chapter layout is quite organized and easy to follow with full support and completed files available from the book's website. For example, the necessary steps for each project are incorporated into the main body of the text with illustrations and easily identifiable code. Go to the website to double check for accuracy or help troublshoot your work. Definitions, clarifications, warnings, and sample code links are neatly laid out in the columns to the side of the text's main body. Depending upon your comfort level of CSS, it is easy to skip around chapters and projects or work straight through.

An inconveniencing aspect of this book is that the CSS is difficult to reference. While the index lists the page numbers to CSS functions, the CSS is incorporated into any number of projects/tutorials, which may or may not be useful for the task you are performing. This book transforms HTML pages into CSS efficient pages; this is a positive consistent quality throughout "Eric Meyer on CSS", but it may have less relevance for people wishing to create HTML + CSS pages from scratch. In future versions of this book, I think it would be interesting to note layout differences between HTML versions and include CSS for XHTML.

Overall, I found "Eric Meyer on CSS" a transformational book for HTML and CSS and I give it the highest possible rating. I recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in CSS or who may use CSS on a quasi regular basis. It is a fine addition to any level (i.e. introductory, intermediate, advanced) CSS library or small collection. Essentially this book taught me how to do professional quality HTML "make overs" with CSS in a manner of speaking; it taught me how to convert HTML pages into more efficient and attractive pages using CSS.

Being a fan of Eric Meyer's previous book on CSS, I was pretty keen on what to expect from 'Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design' in terms of quality. Mr. Meyer's original CSS book was a top notch piece of work when it first came out, and it's a great book today. Like HTML books, there are lots of options available to people if you want to learn how to develop CSS book from a design perspective, but there are not many books out there that look at the subject from a case study point of view.

Look no further.

In the author's book, he takes exactly this route, defining 13 projects, and the nuts of bolts of each one of these projects as it relates to CSS design. Headlined by full color pages and clear, concise writing, this is a book that is easy to read and enjoyable to follow.

The problem is that the things that make this book so unique are also its weakness.

While a case study approach sounds good on paper and it IS interesting, the fact that unless you plan to copy the exact design that Mr. Meyer is using, this text is little more than just a nice reference to relate to. Being different doesn't mean one is wrong, but unless the reader knows what to expect, they might be disappointed by this text.

What this book IS: a case study book that points out different uses of CSS on web pages, highlighting certain tips and tricks that were put to use to get the desired effect

What this book IS NOT: a reference book or a learning tool of how to get CSS working with web pages. This book fully expects the reader to have some understanding/experience of CSS, and they are looking to get further education beyond the bachelor's degree in CSS that they already got (perhaps from reading CSS: The Definitive Reference).

Nice book, but different. Keep that in mind when considering purchasing this text.

**** RECOMMENDED

Meyer is the go-to guy for all things CSS, and this book is ample evidence of that. If you ever needed to know anything about CSS (and/or need a handy desk reference instead of constantly Googling or visiting AListApart.com), look no further. While those with a few years' worth of CSS under their belts already will find some of the content a bit slow and basic, you can't beat this for a first-class reference guide when you're stuck or need to double-check your compliance. This book is comprehensive, thoughtfully written and, above all, useful.

Meyer is the go-to guy for all things CSS, and this book is ample evidence of that. If you ever needed to know anything about CSS (and/or need a handy desk reference instead of constantly Googling or visiting AListApart.com), look no further. While those with a few years' worth of CSS under their belts already will find some of the content a bit slow and basic, you can't beat this for a first-class reference guide when you're stuck or need to double-check your compliance. This book is comprehensive, thoughtfully written and, above all, useful.

This book felt more like a project book in which we follow along with Eric as he builds each of 13 projects. Although I found the follow-along process somewhat useful, it didn't address what I wanted to do - build my own project. To find the CSS elements I wanted for my own project required searching through page after page to find the rule I needed.

I found Mr. Meyer's online project files quite useful and helpful because I didn't have to write any code. I'm reasonably proficient in HTML but not in CSS - so I was hoping for more of a reference manual - rather than a "this is how I did it" project book.

As Mr. Meyer describes in his book (paraphrasing) - this book IS NOT for those new to CSS, who want to understand the subtleties of CSS, done web design only in WYSIWYG environments, or want CSS that works in any environment.

This is NOT A CSS REFERENCE BOOK. I would call it a hands-on project book.

If I were more of a follow-along learner, I'd probably rate this book higher. Especially if I wanted to know "how did he do that?" I'd rate it much higher. I'm not disappointed, but I didn't get much from this book.

I was very skeptical of this book at first, Erics example projects that you learn from seem kind of lame and dated looking, and although they arent visually exciting this isnt a design book, its a book to learn CSS, and learn it I did.

Im already an experienced web developer with some CSS experience but never with fully tableless design. I was able to read this book fairly quickly gather quick knowledge of the aspects of CSS I did not know about. The sites he has you build dont look exciting, however they do a good job teaching you the fundamentals, which is the most important part. I was able to read a chapter, then goto my own personal website which was more fun and apply what I learned. Then read another chapter learn something else and then apply that knowledge to the site I was working on. By the time I finished the book, I had also made a pretty cool site of my own that was visually exciting to me as well as CSS rich (look ma, no tables!)

This way I was getting the most of his excercises, and then applying them to my own fun design. I think this is a perfect way to learn css and I recommend this "dual-path" approach so you don't get totally bored working on eric's designs only.

This is an excellent book for progressing from using style sheets for specifying only fonts and colors to building entire sites driven by CSS layout rendering--it is not a reference book. The author presents thirteen different real-world types of projects to teach and explain the power of CSS, ranging from conversion of existing pages and creation of menuing systems, to multicolumn layout. A short book that will make big changes in the way you build web sites.

Good hands on experience...need more reference, but that's why I should get another book. If you are looking for real world examples and projects, this is a great tool.

How can I say this simply? CSS, you can pick up by really (really) looking at other people's code and then doing it yourself (translate: open notepad and put in stuff like #box{margin:0 auto;width:466px;border:1px solid #555} then save as style.css not style.txt. You then open notepad again to create the html file, one that imports the style.css file. If you don't know how to do this, then just stop reading and get this book.) There wasn't anything in this book that I could not have picked up on my own, via reading other people's CSS files. Save your money, get Meyer's 2nd book instead (ISBN 0735714258), which explains some things you can't get by reading code alone.

The first thing I read to learn CSS was Meyer's CSS: The Definitive Guide (vol. 1) and it was helpful, but I needed the project work in Mastering to really get going with CSS. Like so many web languages it's easier to learn CSS if you can play with someone else's code first. The projects presented in Mastering addressed nearly all of the topics I was interested in. By the end I felt ready to dive into the redesign my department's web site using CSS as the primary formatting language.

This book helped me learn CSS the professional way. This is the only book I've been able to use for a considerable period of time in comparison to other CSS books in market, for developing web pages. The only cons was that it took time for me to know the author's style of explanation!. Once that was cleared, it helped me to a great extent.

I have a few issues with this book, and I have to admit from the start that I only worked through part of the first chapter, then gave up.

1. You are forced through the learning path of working through the examples whether you want to or not.

A reference book this is not, and good luck trying to find an answer to a particular question by searching the index or the TOC. You run across some good stuff just browsing, but that's not how I work best.

2.If you want to learn this way, then fine, but I found his instructions for working through the examples inadquate and often confusing. For example: I read the paragraph at the bottom of the page on page 5 about 10 times and still didn't understand his recomendation for dropping cellpadding and retaining cellspacing when restyling a table layout [excepts]: "...CSS2 states...that margins are not applied to table cells...support for padding on table cells...is pretty good, so we can drop cellpadding. If this approach strikes you as a bad idea, yo could leave in cellpadding to go with cellspacing." OK, so what should I do????

3. He indicates that the book is aimed at intermediate web designers, but presents some really basic info in sidebars, such as defining "declaration" on page 6 and "rule" on page 7. [In fact, why weren't these defined in the same visual area, in relation to each other? That's when you really get it.]

4. He doesn't give the adequate overviews or context for the restyles, and doesn't explain his syntax. I mean, if you don't know what a "rule" is, why would you understand why he uses an id that looks like this: td#advert and then one that looks like this: #content-top td. I knashed my teeth over this one for a while. Still don't get it. Or why use ems or percentages for fonts? He uses both, with no explanation of why, or the pitfalls.

I may get more out of this book when I know more...but then I will know more, and may not need it.

I do recommend the Visual Quickstart Guide by Teague: DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition. Easy to read, information is grouped and presented logically. Easy to find answers. This book is not comprehensive, but a good basic reference.

I have a few issues with this book, and I have to admit from the start that I only worked through part of the first chapter, then gave up.

1. You are forced through the learning path of working through the examples whether you want to or not.

A reference book this is not, and good luck trying to find an answer to a particular question by searching the index or the TOC. You run across some good stuff just browsing, but that's not how I work best.

2.If you want to learn this way, then fine, but I found his instructions for working through the examples inadquate and often confusing. For example: I read the paragraph at the bottom of the page on page 5 about 10 times and still didn't understand his recomendation for dropping cellpadding and retaining cellspacing when restyling a table layout [excepts]: "...CSS2 states...that margins are not applied to table cells...support for padding on table cells...is pretty good, so we can drop cellpadding. If this approach strikes you as a bad idea, yo could leave in cellpadding to go with cellspacing." OK, so what should I do????

3. He indicates that the book is aimed at intermediate web designers, but presents some really basic info in sidebars, such as defining "declaration" on page 6 and "rule" on page 7. [In fact, why weren't these defined in the same visual area, in relation to each other? That's when you really get it.]

4. He doesn't give the adequate overviews or context for the restyles, and doesn't explain his syntax. I mean, if you don't know what a "rule" is, why would you understand why he uses an id that looks like this: td#advert and then one that looks like this: #content-top td. I knashed my teeth over this one for a while. Still don't get it. Or why use ems or percentages for fonts? He uses both, with no explanation of why, or the pitfalls.

I may get more out of this book when I know more...but then I will know more, and may not need it.

I do recommend the Visual Quickstart Guide by Teague: DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition. Easy to read, information is grouped and presented logically. Easy to find answers. This book is not comprehensive, but a good basic reference.

Santa left this gift for me after watching me struggle with CSS. I've got a few CSS books and they've been helpful, but going through this book, using the accompanying website and working through the projects, "I got it!" And since it helped me so much, I've just odered the author's follow-up, More Eric Meyer on CSS. Highly recommended.

I read the reviews before buying this book and "More Eric..", but like a fool I didn't take the time to read the books when they showed up because I was so hopping busy learning html and putting sites together that I just didn't have the time....

But you gotta get these books! Because when you finally sit down to read the first 3 pages of the first book you start seeing repetitive html code disappearing by the TRUCKLOAD. Font tags: your days are numbered. Tables, < br >
, -- whooosh, see ya.

And the power of CSS is so totally awesome that you just want to stay up late at night re-doing all the 30 plus sites you finished without CSS and now you want to write Eric and ask him to include caffeine addiction tips in his next dispatch because you can't believe you've got so much power in CSS and, well, thanks, Eric, for making life grand again.

Anyone who knows the name Eric Meyer knows that he is a diety in the CSS world. This book takes a look at a few step-by-step projects that will help newbies understand how, when, and why to use CSS.
That said, I do not recommend this book to those who are already well versed in CSS. I really didn't get a lot out of it, but I would consider myself a more advanced reader. I can definitely see the benefit for people just getting their feet wet.

This is a very good cook book style introduction to best practices in CSS web authoring. It is a great pity that many browsers - not only legacy browsers - are not sufficiently CSS compliant to render correct use of CSS useful at present. Nevertheless, much of the material presented by Eric Meyer can be used, and this book remains an excellent introduction to the way things should be done. Look at http://www.benjaminrossen.com to see a site made using largly Eric Meyer insights and ideas.

To those reading the below reviews with less than 5 stars...DON"T BUY THEIR REVIEWS. They obviously are very uninformed when it comes to designing with web standards. I have to reply to the above (  
Eric J. Tischler) who referred to hand coding pages as "the web stone age". This is, in every sense of the word, BACKWARDS.

Although WYSIWIG editors are great time savers, they can never replace your BRAIN! Stop falling victim to the mindless "click and serve me" mentality and seperate yourself from the herd.

Learn what Mr. Meyer painstakingly offers in this book.

The power it will give you over layouts is immeasurable and CSS will be a vital part of the futre of web design as HTML4.0 will be relegated back down to where it belongs as structural markup only. HTML was not meant to be used for presentation, which CSS1 and CSS2 perform beautifully at.

thank you and good night! (try the fish!)

So far I am just dabbling with CSS. This book is great for taking you from ground zero to something svelte. The lessen format is like having your personal tutor. I will eventually get around to something practical. In the mean time I am expanding my universe.

So far I find this to be midlevel coding. The real problem with top level is that you have know idea want you are doing and a lot of superfluous overhead is added to the commands; it is good for a quickie but can later paint you into a corner. Low level will give you tighter code and more control over results. Midlevel is a compromise but sometimes adds functionality that can not be reached at the lover level command line coding.

Every language has it strengths and purpose they just do not invent more complexity for the fun of it. I hope to have the mechanics down before I find out what it is.

For me this is the right book at the right time. What time is it for you?

I can't understand why people are so attached to designing pages using code directly, rather than using the tools that have been created to automate much of that. You don't format a letter in your word processor using code, you click a button. You don't edit photos with code, you click a button. Publishers don't layout magazine pages or books using code, but Eric Meyer seems to think that web pages need to be done from scratch, meaning code. Its a colossal waste of time. This sort of thinking would have us all operating our computers from the command line for everything we do. That went out years ago. While this book may be great if you still live in the web stone age of code addicts, don't buy it if you want to design anything worth looking at. Do buy it if you want to spend five times as long creating your pages than you can in a wysiwyg editor that is capable with CSS, such as DW 2004 in design mode. I'm just glad I was able to sell my copy on Amazon.com for most of what I paid for it. Wake up to the modern age and forget books like this.

I have been working my way through On CSS, and when I picked it up I thought I was very wise in the way of cascading style sheets. Mr. Meyers disabused me of that notion. He is an expert and by working through the examples you can really learn to make this system of styling sit up and bark. A note on the back cover says the book is for intermediate to advanced people, the note is correct. Don't buy this book if you are just trying to learn CSS at first. I think some of the disappointed buyers were too new at style sheets to get the expected benefit out of this book. Newbies would do well to investigate Elizabeth Castro's HTML For The World Wide Web by Peachpit Press and all the W3C.org tutorials out there before tackling a man like Meyers. But if you're ready for Eric, Eric is ready for you.

One thing you have to remember, play with the examples after you do them. Try to break them, and don't just follow along without understanding what you are doing. If you try to follow Meyers like a cookbook you will really let yourself down. This is a great learning tool, worth the time and money investments.

Another great feature of On CSS is something which you might think was a miserable drawback at first, but it turns out to be where you can get the most out of the book. The designs you end up with at the end of each chapter are C (Average) grade. Each one screams for a good designer to make them better. So when you finish each exercise, take the style sheet and turn a lackluster presentation into a Grade 1 design. Meyers invites you to play with the finished product at the end of each chapter, please do that---you earned it.

So, I would also say that if you are going to get Meyers' books, open up your wallet a little wider and get Robin Williams' book The Non-Designer's Design Book. I think of her as Meyer's big sister and the two go together like XHTML and CSS (or peaches and cream for you more lyrical folk). Robin Williams is an expert on teaching good design for layout and text (and images as well). Her book is ostensibly for text, but you will have all of the best design lessons you need to style up a remarkably svelte webpage if you do what Williams says with Meyers.

On CSS is a great addition to your understanding (as I am sure the second one is)--As Long As You Put In The Work And Go The Extra Mile.

P.S. Both the Williams and Castro books I recommended are under $20 each and will turn into reference books to keep and go back to often.

After all that I've read about Eric Meyer, I must admit I was left wanting after reading this book. The experience reminded me of certain teachers I had in college: very bright, knew what they were doing, but did not know how to effectively convey their knowledge to others. For instance, his erratic use of varying units of measure within the same CSS rule - usually without explanation - goes against most all professional design convention, making the resulting code both difficult to learn AND difficult to maintain (VERY confusing for subsequent Web technicians needing to modify the work).

Buy the book - but buy it USED.

Excellent Book!

This book is a definite plus for all people who have dabbled in table-free design but weren't quite ready to dive head first. If you are not familiar with basic CSS mark up, this book is not for you. If you wish to learn CSS from the ground up- see Christopher Schmitt's book "Designing CSS Web Pages" published by New Riders as well. Anyone who uses heavy javascript in their design will also find many streamlined CSS alternatives to that clunky code. "More Eric Meyer on CSS" starts off with a lesson on how to convert an existing table layout to cascading style sheets. I like the way Eric leads through the examples, every step in the code reveals possible browser conflicts. Lucky for us, he is able to supply the right workaround to make the pages compliant. Readers will also walk though styling a photo gallery, styling a financial report, `transparency layout', and many more. My favorite lessons were CSS-Driven Drop-Down Menus, Opening the Doors to Attractive Tabs, and Designing in the Garden. I have been a fan of the csszengarden site, and I had fun reaching the Zen Garden!
Overall, this was a useful and comprehensive book. Eric Meyer has a simple way of presenting the lessons. None of the ten lessons he covers should take longer than one hour. He is obviously extremely knowledgeable in this field. His praise is well deserved. I personally plan on implementing these lessons on my personal site and those of future clients. The only flaw I found with this book was chapter 10's missing lesson file from the books website, this was alright, as a similar html file was supplied. It was definitely not enough to lower my perfect rating though.

Make sure you kow what you are doing before you pick up this beauty. Its not for the CSS beginner, but is perfect for the web developer who is really only looking for answers.

Its format is sort of recipe-like in that he guides you step by step through some very specific types of projects, but you can certainly adapt the lesons to do your own thing.

Since Eric is a bit of a CSS purist, he doesnt really cover hacks and work arounds for the various browser incompatibilities, and the screenshots are all on Netscape on Mac. I noted that in a few places my IE 6 on Win XP didnt render exactly the same way.

Beautiful 4 color layout - but why did they make the images so small?

Despite the couple of little issues I had with the book, this may be the best CSS book ever written.

This is a good book, but before buying it, check that you are in the target audience. It is not a reference book. It is not for complete newbies. It is not for gurus, either.
It is more like a hands-on CSS training course for somebody who has used HTML a lot, knows a little bit about CSS, and who wants to make fuller use of CSS. If this is what you are looking for, this is an excellent book. It is well-produced, with appropriate and intelligent use of color screenshots, too.
You will need to use some kind of reference in addition to this book when you actually write CSS for your own sites.

I found this book to be extremly useful. A step by step manual of CSS and how it works with over 20 great examples to learn by. For someone looking to learn more about CSS and it's abilities, this is a great beginers book.

Being in the IT industry, mostly web based, I thought I would give this book a try to see what new material I could learn and apply in my job. Anyway, it was a disappointment. The book doesn't really explain anything but walks you through on changing from a non CSS site to one. It's not that good for what CSS is capable of doing either and the options associated with it. Overall, this book really isn't any good for someone that has experience. To me, it's more of a beginner to intermediate level for those who have only scratched the surface of CSS. If your experienced, don't bother.

Eric's writing is great, however, for a thin book with limited content, my opinion is that New Riders Publishing got greedy with the pricing of the book. $45 retail in the stores?! For the price I expected a book with more meat, more content as opposed to a few tips and tricks. For the price, New Riders could have at least included a disk with all the samples that you are required to download online if you wish to work along as the book is intended. In the book, what Eric has done is to show a few CSS tips and cool tricks, his writing style is very good and his tips are great, however, there isn't enough of it in this book. Don't buy it new, or at least not in the retail stores, it isn't worth the price.
If this is a must have book for you, buy it at Amazon's online price, used, or somewhere such as nerdbooks.com and avoid the FULL $45 retail price such as charged by places like Books-a-Million!!

I bought the book hoping to learn how to create pop-up menus. I was disappointed in that respect. I did find it to be a nice guide for using style sheets for specific situations. Readers who do the homework and visit the companion website can pick up tips on getting things done. I would caution against doing everything shown. Many of the tricks require setting specific positions or heights or widths. Such tricks create pages that are not highly maintainable.

Over 90% of the browsers surfing the internet are using IE, but this book's examples seem to only work best on Netscape browsers. Although the author suggested many hacks for both IE and Netscape, i.e. the voice-family in page 241 for the right margin hacks on Windows IE. It still doesn't work on Windows XP Pro IE6 sp1. The design concept is great though.

Wonderful book, but when the author says you need to know some CSS going in, he means it. This is not a beginners book, to get the most out of it you should know some CSS before opening it.

I started with Steve Callihan's CSS By Example and then 'graduated' to this book. Boy was I glad. Learned a lot more by doing this. I also was able to concentrate on the design elements and tips Meyers offered instead of feeling like I was lost in learning the code.

New Riders publishes nice looking books, but many of them, this one included, suffer from a lack of professional editorial oversight. A book that sells for $45.00 should be proofed a little more closely. The book's companion site lists dozens of editorial errors that should have been caught before the book went to press: [...]. After spending this much on a slim paperback volume, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour paging through the book, hand-correcting editorial errors that New Riders' editors should have caught in the first place.

Otherwise, Meyer's command of CSS is evident, but this is not the book that it could be. The presentation is hampered by its organization into "projects", and the reader must slog through details of Meyer's application of strategies in his own projects to find ideas that can be used elsewhere.

CSS is a great technology, but users are in need of something better organized, better presented, more comprehensive, and less crippled by rampant editorial gaffes.

Like many others, I bought the book based on on-line raves. I thought it was great at first but now the blush is off the rose. The book IS a more informative and user-friendly intro to CSS than the others I have (many are "look what I made, mommy" books by designers...nice visuals but not the best learning tool). Some of the lessons were a struggle so, fortunately, there were the free tutorials from w3schools.com to help with the rough spots.....never thought of myself as a slow learner until now.

Then, just when you think CSS will answer all your prayers, you get seriously gored by the infamous NN4 incompatibilities and then IE problems crop up.

What this and every other book lacks is a decent chart reference which shows browser incompatibilities like the great cheat sheet programming cards from visibone.com BUT, I shouldn't have to buy this kind of critical tool, it oughta be a pullout or be in the appendix.

Until a better book comes out, prospective buyers should go ahead and get this one PLUS Meyers Programmers Reference (ISBN #0072131780). Round it out the Visibone cheat sheets for quick reference and to keep those nasty NN4 and IE4 nightmares from giving you an ulcer. Between all this stuff and the W3C School site (PS:which also has HTML and CSS validator links and other very cool stuff), even I was able to master CSS...but it takes more books and programmer's aids.

This book is far from a comprehensive reference guide for CSS (see the O'reilly CSS Definitive Guide - also by Eric - for that), but it is a great step-by-step get-your-feet-wet introduction to the principles of CSS. We use it as part of our training for all of our web interns and employees.

I give this book 3 stars, because it does a very good job of explaining and dealing with common issues in CSS. Unfortunately, the designs themselves are on the whole horrible - sorry, it's the only word. It's a shame that the author didn't get some designs from a graphic/web designer to complement what are on the whole excellent explanations of dealing with real world CSS issues, especially as he makes design comments, he's not qualified to make. Have a look at excerpt 10 in the sample pages to get an idea. This is an important issue because one of the powers of CSS is that it can be used to integrate the design and the content in a meaningful and elegant way. On the positive side, often the small pointers that he has for labelling css are particularly good, and I regularly find myself going 'ah, that's so useful'. If your CSS skills are well up to scratch perhaps look at Zeldman's 'Designing with Web Standards' as a possible alternative, but if your still working your way through the CSS in the real world then this is a very useful and practical book and I for one (with 8 years of web-building behind me) find it useful.

I recently purchased this book based on the customer reviews I read here on Amazon. I must say that it is a very well-written book, and the author seems extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter. However, I am slightly disappointed that there is not more technical information on how to correctly write Cascading Style Sheets and all the different CSS properties available. Instead, the author leads the reader through several hands-on projects designed to teach the reader how to implement different design techniques using CSS. I would have preferred a little more reference information (maybe an appendix) that allows the reader to use the book as a quick reference when starting a new CSS project or brushing up on some of the technical aspects. The material strikes me as having been written more for someone already very proficient in CSS who simply needs more design ideas, not for somone who is still learning how to implement CSS into a Web site. Nevertheless, it is still a very useful book.

If you learn by doing the examples, this is the book for you. Clearly written with extensive source code available from the net.

If I ever meet Eric Meyer in person, I'll have to drop to my knees and worship him. All of his books are outstanding, but this one is his best.

It's not for CSS beginners at all, but if you're basically familiar with CSS and want to learn more practical applications, then this book is for you:

- Navigation menus with CSS
- retrofitting existing pages for CSS
- creating printable pages

There's something good on every page. I teach Web design and have recommended it to my students. You can't go wrong with Eric Meyer and CSS.

This is a gorgeous, full-color, masterfully laid-out piece of work by an author with cutting-edge understanding of Cascading Style Sheets and willingness to share his fine creative judgement. Yet it may take you a while to convince yourself (as it did me myself) that you need one more Eric Meyer CSS title. The glowing reviews finally broke through my resistance, and my facility with CSS has had several breakthroughs as a result.

Like many of you, I already have Eric's two premier titles for guiding web transitions from the difficult world of patched-together HTML solutions to the powerful, systematic, maintenance-friendly potentials of CSS. Here's my experience so you can see if it matches yours.

Through insightful and persuasive volumes such as Owen Briggs 'C S S: Separating Content from Presentation' (see reviews at ISBN 1904151043) I finally got that *aha* experience about CSS: These new standards are more than just style sheets, design aids, and download-enhancers; more even than the sum of these: once HTML 4 standards are better followed by browsers, CSS will open up all web-design work in remarkable ways. *HOWEVER*: design life in the meanwhile is extremely frustrating while browsers take their sweet time repairing past imbedded sins. As much as I wanted to break free from old HTML ways, the inconsistencies and vagaries of how browsers render CSS so discouraged me from solving design issues with CSS, that I considered taking a two year sabbatical from design until technology caught up. I thought I was just 'losing it' until I found Eric's own statement right on my desk in 'C S S: The Definitive Guide': "You may notice that, unlike other chapters, almost none of the figures in (the chapter on Positioning objects) was generated with a web browser. This is... a statement about the reliability and consistency of positioning implementations..."

What's the average designer to do when even Jeffrey Zeldman admits (in his preface here) that his fallback position in the current world of CSS is *emailing Eric Meyer*? In this volume we see. Eric walks you through common types of design and redesign issues are solvable through CSS (and provides frequent color screen shots displaying exactly what happens after small changes in code). It is refreshing that so much care is taken with both the design and writing of this book. Even the *hints* in margins surprise me - after I thought I had read practically every CSS hint published to date. Eric puts them together in an engaging manner.

No matter how skilled you are with design or with HTML, unless your mastery of CSS specifically is on a par with Eric's (all 3 or 4 of you such people), I think that after reading twenty pages of "Eric on CSS" you are likely to feel you wasted valuable time each week since this book's release! Thanks, Eric. Thanks, New Riders for the time and expense to make such a quality volume. Fine work on the companion web site and downloadable code as well!

If you are interested in learning about CSS, especially its power, you need this book. If you really gotta learn about CSS, you need this book. Of course it will get dog-earred from use and if purchased for a "corporate use" library, you may have to dust off your boxing gloves. I personally refuse to share!

Excellent resource. Do yourself a favor and work the examples throughout the book. Once you start with Chapter 1, you'll want to anyway. Usually I start these but don't finish. This one was different. I felt I had to finish -- like a great novel you can't put down until you see "the end".

This is an outsatnding book. Unfortunately it turned me into a css geek for a few weeks and I had to rebuild my company web site from scratch.

the flip side is that I now have a full featured e-commerce site with nary an html table in sight.

This book does a great job on what it says it does. But do you know what it does? Just be sure you do before you buy it. This book is intended not to teach you CSS, it presumes you already know CSS2. Instead of teaching you the actual language this book shows you how to apply it. Each chapter is a detailed 'case study' if you want to call it that. Meyer does a great job at walking you through various real life scenarios you might encounter such as converting a normal web template to a CSS one. So don't get me wrong this book is a 5 star book in that regard but the problem is I don't think most people realize that's all this book is really for.

Simply put, if you don't already know how to write complex CSS2 stylesheets then BUY ANOTHER BOOK first. Fortunately for myself I've been a professional designer / developer for 5 years now, so when I picked up this book (not knowing how to write complex CSS prior to reading it) I was able to figure out the code and learn CSS2 on the fly. However this is not a good way to learn for many people so if you don't know CSS yet or not really familar with it try another book before picking this one up. Otherwise BUY THIS BOOK becuase YES, it is really really good!

I marvel any author these days who can produce a pratical and readable book on software. Eric does a good job at making us want to read and learn the gems in CSS. I like it because the examples are relevant and you can see how you can apply them. This book is more a learning by doing book then many others that I have read on the same subject. Eric will not bore you with explanations, but instead uses examples to demonstrate the fine points. Good book to have.