I wanted to like this book. If you are new to design, it contains useful sections on page prototyping, grid-based design, color, and design practices. These are things designers should learn about, especially if they arrive in web design from other fields. I give the book three stars for these positive features and for its high production values.

Physically, the book is about two inches wider than a standard programming book. The paper is heavy and coated with full color all over the place. This is nice, but the author goes too far. Some pages include pictures of websites, but many other pages are filled with seemingly random photographs and montage works. In fact, pages 239-242 are fully dedicated to a scrapbook sample. Page 243 includes some text, but 244 is another wasted page. The images are sedate, and these picture pages seem to take up a quarter of the book. White space abounds. Consequently, as others have noted, the book is light on useful information.

I understand the attraction of grids. CSS divs and table cells both lend themselves to grid layouts. I know it is in vogue to emulate the multi-column layouts found in a newspaper page. I've read plenty about usability and how people actually surf. Unfortunately, the author's fixation with these conventions leads to dull page design. The most interesting, useful technique in the whole book involves the intelligent use of relative and absolute positioning to displace background images so that they break up the outlines of the blocks.

On the down side, the author advocates the use of browser-specific style sheets and the use of CSS3 style rules. Current browsers still have problems with some CSS 2.1 rules. The CSS3 rules will be great when browsers support them, but they won't help you write pages that work on multiple browsers and platforms. And that's the real issue with this book. It contains information that is useful to beginners, but it's not really a beginner book. This book won't have you writing CSS and XHTML in a few hours. The strange mixture of beginning and advanced materials mixture may confuse beginners while offering little that is new or useful to more experienced designers. Add in the sheer volume of wasted space and I have only one recommendation: Borrow the book from the library.

I checked this book from the library and I'm glad I did. I would not want to buy this book. This book is not for beginners, which is fine. There are many other very good books for beginners, including Craig Grannell's The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design (Essential Guide) and Charles Wyke-Smith's Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter). But this book is not worth the money; and that's the problem.

The book touts itself as "The Fine Art of Web Design." This may be true if you're a follower of Mondrian, but I want a more complex art. The author places all of his design emphasis on standardization and the grid. For the most part, his design samples are dull collections of blocks. The most interesting, useful technique in the whole book involves the intelligent use of relative and absolute positioning to displace background images so that they break up the outlines of the blocks. It's a good trick, but anyone who understands the box model can already do that. His discussion of prototyping is also interesting; but again, it seems likely designers in his target audience will know how to do that.

Perhaps the book itself is supposed to be a work of fine art. The book is about two inches wider than a standard programming book. The paper is heavy and coated with full color all over the place. The production values are excellent. Too bad. As others have noted, the book is light on information. Some pages include pictures of websites, but many other pages are filled with seemingly random photographs and montage works. In fact, pages 239-242 are fully dedicated to a scrapbook sample. Page 243 includes some text, but 244 is another wasted page. The images are sedate, and I'm sure many designers have fine collections of source material. If I bought this, I would feel robbed.

Even so, I wanted to like this book. I've outgrown the beginner books. I want to stretch what I can do with CSS; but I also want my markup to work on more than one browser. In place of immediately useful material, the author advocates CSS3 style rules. Those will be great when browsers support them, but they don't help me write better pages today. And that's the real issue with this book. It's not a beginner book, but the target audience will already know how to exploit the box model, how to prototype a page, how to set up a color scheme, etc. Ergo, it receives two stars.

This book is a real gem! I read it often just for inspiration. The author is passionate about design, markup, and styling and it rubs off on me. Transcending CSS fills a niche somewhere between the technical manuals and design books. It has had a clear impact on my work.

Transcending CSS is a book that, as it explains in its opening, isn't intended as a basic overview of CSS. It assumes a solid base of knowledge, and if you have that, the book can be extremely beneficial.

That's not to say that the book wouldn't be useful to a novice designer, but they might want to pick it up again after they have more experience with the CSS selectors and attributes Clarke uses.

The book has a lot of material regarding separating layout and style and making semantically correct HTML, which is important for both designers and developers to understand as web pages become more and more feature-rich and stylized. Clarke presents it in an easy-to-understand format, and helps the reader see semantic markup everywhere.

The sections regarding layout and inspiration were very well done, however I felt that more could have been done here. I suppose that it's forgivable since it is a book about CSS and web design rather than design theory, but I found those sections to be the most interesting.

I highly recommend this book to any designer or developer looking to get a better grasp of where web design is going and what constitutes good web design.

This book is amazing in it's holistic approach to web design using CSS. It's from a designer's perspective and helps a lot in the thought process and workflow departments, then shows you a wonderful way to build up a design from the ground up based on a content-out approach. In some ways I wish that I had read it before any other CSS book, but I don't think I would have been able to appreciate it as much that way - it's an advanced book that has great pacing and brings a large number of design concepts all together. It gave me the feeling that I was tying up a lot of loose ends in my personal knowledge base and making it all complete. Great book! *I wouldn't sell my for anything*

First, there are way too many full-page pictures and quotes in this book, which could have been used to provide meaningful content. Second, the author gives a lot of his opinions, and comes off as pretentious. The book's back cover says that you'll be able to "implement highly original designs through visual demonstrations of the creative possibilities using markup and CSS." I disagree, because much of the book is a discourse on Web page-related subjects such perspective, grid-based design, and using a scrapbook for inspiration. A scrapbook! It's doesn't contain a lot of instructions on how to implement CSS, and for the amount that does, it's accounts for about 30% of the book. This book $49.99. It's a lot of money for a lot of fluff. If you're looking for a hands-on instructional book on CSS, look somewhere else.

I think this is an excellent book for more advanced CSS users although still worth buying for beginners for some excellent ideas and concepts.
This is one of the better books I have purchased on CSS, beautifully presented and written with real passion.

Don't expect tons of code, here you'll find really interesting concepts about web design.

The last part of the book is about the future of CSS.

If you want to improve your understanding of web design buy it :)

While it has excellent pictures, the book is lacking "how"

Design Is great, But I want meat!

Looking for another book on CSS of the mechanics of CSS, in my sights is Eric Meyer...

This book's purpose is NOT to teach you CSS. It has great CSS examples but it
assumes you know CSS.

What this book does teach you is how to design with CSS. It starts the process
with the concept of designing "content out". If you are a programmer who simply
replaced table elements with div elements and thought you were using CSS, think again.

A real CSS artistic designer will look at the content first, then choose, in a logical fashion, the most sensible html elements to display that content. Then the designer will style those elements. I now look at content first when I used to look at layout first.

One of the goals of "transcending CSS" was to bridge the gap between designer and programmer. The book achieves this goal. Programmers will now understand the design process better. By using the process effectively, you'll end up with a flexible design that can be easily skinned.

One of the best things about the book is the comments in the margins. These comments may be notes about usage of CSS, links to great resources on the web, or alternative designs that can be used. I learned as much from the margins as from the body of the book.

The last part of the book applies the book's concepts to some eye-catching designs. If you utilized any of these design techniques, you'd have a sharp looking web site.

The last chapter of the book talks about what is coming in CSS 3. You might think you can't use any of that stuff yet but the book shows you how you can get started today.

This book is excellent quality too. In fact it is the ONLY technical book I have ever bought that didn't have mistakes. The source code works. The links to web sites are valid. The text is free of poor grammar and worse spelling. The author's style of writing is colloquial, smooth, and informative. The narrative is not dry and boring. The chapters keep your attention all the way through. I read this book from page 1 to the very last page.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the design process from a real designer/artist perspective.

In addition to what people have already said about the techniques not realistically being usable for a while yet, the problem I had with this book is that a lot of it is like listening to someone's opinions about how you should work instead of being instructed new techniques and let you decide for yourself. Probably 70% of this is the author's opinion about how he thinks designers should work...like not using Dreamweaver or Flash. He says working in Dreamweaver makes it harder to learn. I've hand-coded and used WYSIWYG's and it comes down to a preference. And actually new version of Dreamweaver has many templates and I think a great way for noobs to learn.

When he does try to instruct it is often incoherent. Like when he says that when you remove visual presentation from table-based designs, it makes the content order incomprehensible. Huh? To make things worse the illustration for this, the content looks fine and orderly.

Another beef I have is that the material here is stretched out. I guess this was to justify it being worthy of a book (a $50 one no less!). Lots of beautiful photography that have nothing to do with content are taking up lots of full pages. Many times material is repeated and illustrated on full pages unnecessarily. But conversely, when he touches upon something that leaves you with questions he doesn't elaborate. So you don't learn.

This book actually angers me because its so pretentious with its coffee-table book presentation and almost total lack of any substance. If you've ever talked to a pretentious designer who you suspected was all talk, well now you can have that same "wonderful" experience in book form because that's what it feels like.

I'm giving it 2 stars only because of the occasional helpful passage and also for the way they illustrated CSS blocks by superimposing the selector over the block so you can see exactly what it refers to. I think with a better content this would be a great way to learn. A MUCH better alternative to this is Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm. Not without its faults too but they are minor compared to how much is packed in that little book. But this one is definitely one to skip. This is bargain bin material.

Andy Clarke's book is great source of inspiration for all those who want to develop better websites.
If there is something like "truth" in the realm of webdesign, then a good part of this truth has been captured by Andy Clarke in his brilliant book.

The book contains ideas, approaches, examples, explanations, images, code, experiences : all you need to think forward and to pick the ideas you need to improve your skills and approach.

Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter) is not so much as a "How To" as it is a "Why To" book. Andy Clarke is an evangelist for a new and better way of designing for the web. There is an ever growing need to present content in the most effective and appealing way for a verity of different browsers. Not everyone uses the same browser and different browsers don't do implement CSS functionality the same way. Plus older browsers may not be compatible with CSS in current use.

Andy Clarke's premise is that instead of developing the layout first and then fitting the content in to the layout, start by organizing the content first and then implement your layout design on top of your content. This way, the content will always be presented in an organized, effective and appealing way no matter what browser the content is being display on.

I bought this book under an advice I took from a blog... I thought... what the heck... I know CSS, but the plain vanilla... I have read a technical book till the end (took me almost a year) and I need something different.

I was surprised...this one is a blast to read, simply put, a delightful reading, even to take it to bed :) (Depending on the company)

Great visual quality, simple examples, and the usual obnoxious tone I tend to admire in brits, even though they don't really have the need for it ;)

If Andy Clarke is as "direct" in is classes as he is in the book, then his seminars must also be a blast to tend to, the kind of classes you don't take notes...because you don't need to.

Finally I understood what meaningful and semantic CSS are... and found out that I was applying all the technicalities correctly, but skipping the basics of its usage (I tend to confuse this word with sausage) all the way!

Attention: Too many pictures of food... in bed they tend to produce some undesired urges to get up and raid the refrigerator with strange results (Depending on the company)

I haven't been involved in too many designs as I am more prone to actual development coding (backend scripting). However after taking a new position that has me waist deep in both worlds I knew I needed to start spending more time understanding design aspects, process, progression, concepts, etc. This book saved the proverbial "day" for me.

Andy Clarke's masterpiece gave me an indepth view of so many different areas of web design it was hard to put down and not re-read immediately after finishing it the first time! I constantly refer back to this book for inspiration. It was written in a way that helps trigger your thought processes about how his examples and concepts pertain to your own work or work you might want to do in the future.

Excellent read and I look forward to reading more work from Clarke.

Altogether this is a great book, especially the design theory, grids, workflow, and css principles, but the part where you jump into the hands on coding is poor, missing files from the download section of the site, plus parts of the coding examples that seem to tell you too input some css rules, then 2 pages later those rules are not there anymore without telling the reader, very confusing, you find yourself searching around the internet for support, but to not much avail, in the end I just gave up on the hands on section on this book, and just read the other parts, but these parts are good enough on there own to stop me from returning this book.. such a shame too, was really enjoying the writing style of Andy Clarke, seems the proof readers let him down :(.

"Transcending CSS" is its own example of the next evolutionary step in writing about web design. Created for designers, by designers, they are not stingy with the code needed to develop the beautiful, functional layouts. I bought this book as a "reward" for launching my first CSS-based design for a client, and it's already paid for itself by showing me how to develop my CSS skill set for current and future clients.

This book I thought was a pretty nice, awesome looking book, and it is...

...Until he starts getting into the new CSS standard, which really doesn't help anyone on today's browsers, therefore isn't a really viable solution for now. This will be a great book in like a year or 2, but for anyone who really wants to be able to design CSS for websites in all browsers (Explorer, Firefox, etc) then this is not your book.

This guy should have stuck to the current standard, he would of been much better off.

I was pleasantly surprised when I read this book. It advocates a content-out philosophy that I hadn't expected from an author with a background in design, although I'm well aware of Andy's long-standing commitment to web accessibility.

As expected, the graphic imagery and the layout of the book is quite stunning and very inspirational. But that was only to be expected.

Anyone who creates web sites should read this book, especially those with a design-centric view of the process. Andy Clarke shows us that it is possible to have the cake and eat it too: you can create visually stunning sites that are semantic, standards-compliand and accessible.

This book offers invaluable information on the importance of the (and how to) use standards for web design, and make your site look awesome. This book is a must if you are commited to good taste, good design and usability. Not for the novice though, you need a basic understanding of html and css to take advantage of the book.

Buy this book only if you want to see what can be done to give great look to your site? But don't expect that the book will tell you how to do it?..Hardly any CSS implementation until you reach to the end of the book , until then most of us would be exhausted ....

But I would prefer this book for everyone who has good hold of CSS already...go for this book and have a copy of it for getting great CSS ideas...

Hope this helps....

This is one of the best looking books I have ever read. Lots of great advice and easy to read. I loved this book. I really wish my school would have used this book over the one they did when going over web design. Be warned though, this is not for beginners. Learn CSS before you get this book.

Andy Clarke has written a gem amongst well-structured, but often dry and monotonous CSS manuals. This book particularly benefits the fine artist, who follows a more conceptual and visual approach to design, by connecting the dots between CSS implementation and the resulting visual presentation.

I will admit that 'transcending CSS' was read in conjunction with two other CSS books: 'Beginning CSS' by Simon Collison and 'CSS Mastery' by Andy Budd. However, it was 'transcending CSS' that sealed the gap and created a bridge with the first two books. It was almost as if each author had unwittingly wrote their book with the others in mind; they make a great series in CSS instruction. I strongly recommend that if you are completely new to CSS, you try reading Collison first or something comparable to basic CSS.

This book has amazing visuals that help motivate both designers and developers to use CSS as a creative tool. The technical content is properly structured and explained with 'everyday' dialog. It's also a great resource for browser tips, designer sites, and various tutorial links.

If you are more of a visual person, you may find some sections on inspirational techniques a bit redundant, especially after your brain has switched into tech-mode by practicing the CSS exercises. However, I considered this good training. It's overwhelming being bogged down with too much tech in the beginning.

All in all, I found this book well worth the time and money.
It remains one of the few technical books I have read from cover to cover, without skipping around to garner specific bits of information.

This is the best book I have seen since " Killer Website Design '
I have been using tables in my sites until now. I had decided to impliment CSS in my websites and was researching the best references and then I found this book at Borders. I sat down and lightly read through the whole book and later decided to buy it. I have been wanting to get away with from using tables and the inherent slow posting of images. I am primarily a photographer who also designs and implements site design on my own and a few other client sites. I am now gradually planning and working on ideas to replace my old designs with 2nd and hopefully soon the 3rd generation of CSS presented in this book. Even if you are not ready to move to the Transcedent method of CS3 web design, this is a book to inspire the transition.

Only in Part 2 and I'm loving this book and can't put it down. Even though I consider myself a "web developer" and not a "web designer", this book is so helpful and explains everything so clearly. I can't say enough about it...I'm very glad I bought it!

Before I begin, I would have given this book 4 1/2 stars if I could.

Transcending CSS is one of those books that fill a void for what better of a lack of term, "design outerthink". If you are looking for a stodgy, pragmatic book on CSS, you won't find it here. Rather, Transcending CSS brings together a step by step process that forces you to think and deliver websites that meet the needs of the most important person you know - the viewer. It lets the web designer breathe with creativity and yet remind him that the expression of visual presentation should be well balanced with the need for contextual, purposeful meaning.

The only thing I would have liked this book to have are larger thumbnail images that accompany the content along the left and right side columns of each page. My suggestion to the publisher is to place the images on each separate page. The format of the book is wonderful, and has the same form factor as a 1280x1024 21" LCD screen. Rich in color and excellent in layout, this is one of New Riders finest. If not for the small thumbnails, this would have been a "5 star" book easily. This is no doubt a quality technical book and it shows.

Listen up! I am going to make this short and sweet!
Are you new to CSS? Start here: Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide (VOICES).

If you have used CSS for a while buy this book.

My 2 cents: I learned web design and programming backwards. I started using Dreamweaver and learned the WYSIWYG inside and out and then slowly began working with the code. Having done this gives me a unique perspective.

The more I learned about XHTML and CSS the more I realized I was losing out by relying on Dreamweaver to write my web pages,

Andy Clarke is 100% correct when he says it is better to design and create sites with basic coding and tools.

The more I work on the web, the less useful Dreamweaver becomes to me. Dreamweaver is a great tool, but it cannot supply the full scope and power of css.

Writing your own code and css gives you much more control and power over your design. It is scary at first and may seem like you're not smart enough to do it, but if you are tired on not feeling like you're in 100% control of your code, you need to learn CSS and basic XHTML. You will be much happier!

This book rocks! It teaches you how to use CSS and not abuse it.
The rest of the world may not care if they're using it correctly as long as it works,but for those who do and have pride in their work, this book is for you.

Mike

Andy Clarke does a great job of explaining and encouraging next-generation techniques and forward-thinking Web development for already experienced Web professionals. In addition, he includes a good number of online references to blogs, articles and industry pros, which I found very helpful in expanding on some of the ideas he brings forward. This book literally came in very handy for me as I employed his techiques for creating markup guides in writing semantic, meaningful XHTML markup of my page design for a client, prior to even considering any of the page aesthetics or presentational elements at all. This is a wonderful book for Web professionals to include on their shelves, and I hope many of it's suggestions for advancing the art of Web design will be contagious and practiced widely.

Andy Clarke's "Transcending CSS" is the first book on CSS that successfully marries the artistic and technical skills that are the heart of modern web design. The book should appeal to those who are primarily trained in the design disciplines--the author includes a thorough treatment of grid-based design and the use of mood boards, scrapbooks, and other creative tools. "Transcending CSS" will also be of great benefit to the seasoned CSS hand, as he challenges us to reexamine old habits and workflows, to embrace change, and to plan for advanced web standards.

Apart from a core group of "standardistas", the field of web design is still a divided camp--graphic designers who cling to WYSIWYG editors and claim they "can't do HTML", and coders who (though technically adept with markup and programming languages) lack the most basic knowledge of the principles of visual design, color, typography, and the like.

Andy's book goes a long way towards fostering the development of a truly professional discipline of web design, one wherein its practioners are well versed in aesthetic theory, confident in their creativity, and technically capable of creating functional, accessible, and durable web content. This book is also an engaging read, as Andy's wit and energy shines through his writing. (Andy's presentations are immensely popular on the design conference circuit.)

"Transcending CSS" is a must-have for your web design bookshelf, as indispensable as Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS and Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series) and Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition.

This book is a must read for anyone wanting to REALLY start using CSS. So many of us are stuck in the old ways, this book inspires change and provides helpful tips on how to "re-program" your mind and your websites.

This book is a must read for anyone wanting to REALLY start using CSS. So many of us are stuck in the old ways, this book inspires change and provides helpful tips on how to "re-program" your mind and your websites.

This is an excellent book that shows that the use of Cascading Style Sheets is not antithetical to good design concepts. Stitching together the technical and the creative, author Andy Clarke demonstrates how to structure your XHTML properly, apply CSS rules, and then almost effortlessly apply an effective graphical theme to it. In an age where everyone seems to think print is dead this book itself is very well-designed and a joy to read, look at, and learn from.

While there are great books in existence on the subject of CSS and XHTML (Bulletproof Web Design by Cederholm, CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, Web Standards Solutions by Cederholm, Designing With Web Standards by Zeldman, etc.) I don't view them as design oriented books. They're validations based coding books, and they're good.

The thing that's different about this book as that it covers more in the realm of design. Sure it talks about compound XTHML (which is really cool), advanced CSS3 selectors and such, the content out approach... yada yada... It's done more for me in regards to web DESIGN. An area that I feel has been greatly overlooked in many of the other books. On the flip side, I see how the book would satisfy an experienced designer as well.

This book describes things like divine proportion, and grid layout - subjects that many designers probably take for granted. They may view this part of the book as very remedial. The level at which he demonstrates this information is not incredibly advanced... it's geared towards developers... enlightening them on the world of design. Conversely, he presents advanced CSS topics in a way that will make sense to the design folks, teaching them about front end coding techniques. His mission seems to be the bridging of the gap between the two disciplines, and I think he's done a great. Designers and Coders alike both have something to gain from Transcending CSS.

This book does have good aspects: the 'content-out' approach Andy Clarke takes, the sneak peak into CCS3 features, and the recommendations for looking at other media and the real world for inspiration.
However, it is very poorly edited and contains some bad mistakes. For example: traditionally, when presenting code, newly added lines are bolded. In this book, it is often done incompletely or incorrectly, or lines are left out of the code altogether (check out page 161). Also, one gets the feeling that the good parts of the book could have been condensed down into a more affordable and much smaller book or even a pamphlet. Lastly, some items go underexplained. For example, when introducing the use of attribute selectors, Clarke uses examples such as li[id="cake"], which makes no sense at all, because it still requires an id to be applied in the markup, and actually uses more characters than li#cake. More importantly, though, it does not get to the heart of when and why attribute selectors can be so useful.
In the end, I'd recommend waiting till you can get a cheap used copy of this book, read it, and pass it on.

Not filled with useless repetitive beginner trivia, T.CSS speaks to the designer/developer interested in becoming truly fluent in CSS: understanding not just the rules of the language, but understanding why those rules exist and how to use them comfortably and cleanly.

Definitely worth it. *And* the design of the book itself is a pleasure all of its own...

As a professional web designer, I really appreciate and relate to where Andy Clarke is coming from in this fantastic book. Web Designers are the best of both left and right brainers. We have to be logical when it comes to content and coding (not to mention business objectives, user profiling, competitive analysis, and PM, but that is a topic for another time), but we also have to be very creative when it comes to front-end/GUI design and communicating thru design. Clarke touches on all subjects related to what a typical web designer goes thru from best practices to workflow to inspirational stuff.

That being said, I think the title is a little misleading. If anything, the subtitle would have made a better title "The Fine Art of Web Design (using Standards)."

This is NOT a book for beginners who want to learn Standards. You would be better off getting Dan Cederholm's two books or Andy Budd's CSS Mastery (though I guess that is not for beginner's either ;)

If you're looking for a different angle, get this book. In the end, this book will teach you something new, be it a new method, new technique, or reinforce best practices.

One of the major decisions one needs to make when starting a website project is how "cutting edge" your site design will be. Will you use only basic HTML or will you also use CSS, JavaScript, Ajax and more? If you do decide to use these other web languages, how much will you use and how will you use them? For a long time, there was only one answer to this question. Those features that were supported by the most popular web browsers represented the limited amount of advanced features that you could add to your site and still be assured that most people would be able to access your site.

In this book the author, Andy Clarke, presents the argument that website design should not be limited in this way. Written from the designer's point of view, this book has beautiful photography, plentiful screenshots and real-world examples of the author's approach to web design. The purpose of this book is not to teach you web standards or the popular web languages such as XHTML, CSS and JavaScript but to teach you how to use these tools to create effective and cutting edge websites.

In the first part of the book, Clarke discusses the Graded Browser Support approach to web design introduced by Yahoo and the seven principles of Transcendent CSS. The author's goal is to expand your design options beyond the commonly used table-based layouts and toward a content-based approach where the website structure is based on the meaning and purpose of the content on the page.

The next part of the book teaches how to build a web standards compliant and content-based website with XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. Again, it is not the author's desire to teach these languages and he does assume a working knowledge of them. Instead, Clarke shows you how to replace the table-based layout with a grid-based positioning of the elements on the webpage. Once you are not constrained by the table-based layout, your options are far less limited to the common two and three column design. Clarke walks you through several sample websites to demonstrate the use of alternative positioning and layout techniques. Finally, he discusses the advantages of the CSS3 advanced layout module and designing websites for different media types.

Andy Clarke is a ten year veteran of the web and is lead designer and creative director for his design consultancy. He is a member of the Web Standards Project and has worked with the W3C's CSS Working Group.

This is seriously the best book I have ever bought for web design - for every aspect of my design work! Highly recommended by me! It is very in-depth about all the important parts of the process and offers brilliant ways to maximize the output of your project, especially when working with a client. He takes the time to start from the basic design process and works up through the final product. Excellent in every way. My new favorite book. I carry it everywhere with me.

This is the kind of book I love to discover. The last time I got so excited by a book on CSS was when I read Jeffrey Zeldman's Design with Web Standards back in 2003. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen often enough. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of books on CSS and web design that I love and recommend, but few that excite me.

The format itself is a shear pleasure. A square book. A soft square book that stays open without having to drop something heavy on it, or to break its spine. The illustrations and photography are beautiful. The layout is gorgeous. Up to Andy Clarke's work standards, no doubt. I received it the day before the Christmas break, just in time for holiday reading.

This is not a book on CSS per se, nor a book on XHTML per se. It's about design and the philosophy of web design. About how one structures one's design workflow, how one looks at the world, how one communicates.

Divided into 4 sections, Andy walks you through his concepts of Discovery, Process, Inspiration to finally reach Transcendence. The notions covered are the principles of Transcendent CSS, semantic markup and web design process, content-out approach (discover), workflow principals and prototypes (process), layout, grid design and typography (inspiration) and finally advanced CSS technics including CSS3 (Transcendence).

The examples used throughout the different chapters are enlightening and relevant. Useful sidebar notes are made available for more information, references and URLs on a particular topic. The code examples are numerous and the source code is available online (you will find the URL on page 291). You'll find useful tips on how to structure your stylesheet files, to name your classes and ids in a semantic manner, etc. I don't always agree with everything Andy presents here, but we all have our bad old habits, and it is never to late to learn better. The Cook! tutorial may use too many classes and ids in my opinion, but the purpose here is to demonstrate a process, not to optimise markup.

I especially enjoyed the second half (inspiration and transcendence) on Andy's exploration of grid design and inspiration, and the combination of technics presented in the final chapters, especially the CSS3 chapter (page 313). The new selector modules and the Advanced Layout Module sound awesome (the latter is available on the official site). Overall, I felt very at home with the principles presented here, which certainly contributed to me liking this book so much.

I am by no means a graphic designer. My curricula places me closer to the development end of the spectra of web design. But design facinates me. The information architecture, design, accessibility and semantics of websites are what drives me today, and this book is about most of these. It will help graphic designers to better understand the web semantics and structure that underlay any website, and help to broaden their vision of web design.

I consider Andy Clarke as some kind of visionary. He is capable of bridging the gap between aesthetic beauty and rock solid technology and explain it all to you in simple words, through understandable concepts. He has a great sense of humour. This book will not only guide you through modern web design concepts, it will inspire you.

It is the best book covering the artistic side of web design, it has many examples and amazing illustrations, the development of the topics is smooth and it is a pleasure to read.

Ok this is a very LOOSE review because I haven't completely finished the book yet, I am on the last chapter which is basically when the book decides to take off. First 250 some odd pages are fluff, honestly. I can't quite see how many people have given this book a "great" review. If you are looking for a book that will teach you CSS DO NOT GET THIS BOOK. I don't know what i was expecting from this book however it definitely fell short of whatever it was i was looking for. Lets see, yeah its a pretty book riddled with misc pictures pertaining to just about NOTHING, pages upon pages (IMO) wasted with pretty pictures that I can see in any magazine. Inspiration, pffft.

I went from Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional by Simon Collision (great book) to this. I thought maybe (from reading the description) this book may help inspire me but you know what a book (like this) cannot inspire you unless your that easily inspired to throw 30+ bucks away.

As I said this book doesn't take off for quite a while, if your like me you want a book to TEACH YOU CSS. Simon Collision's book did just that, i wanted to expand upon that with good visual designs and sites that were torn down and analyzed. That is done in this book but not as much as I would have like have seen. Many (including the authors) are calling this book a marvel of modern web design techniques and a "masterpiece in its own regard". I disagree. It is an "ok" book, maybe my expectations are too much but I don't think this book will inspire too much, goto a museum, sit outside, paint, read a newspaper, maybe that will inspire.

I just feel very disappointed by this book, so much so that I think it may be on its way back to amazon, its quite boring and if your like me your wondering when the hell is this thing going to take off, stop with the pretty pictures and show me sites and tear them apart. That is the best way to learn right?

I'm off to CSS Mastery and Bulletproof web design after this, maybe I should have read this book last for "inspiration".

Please don't think i'm a sour puss for giving this book a not so great review but I have to be a realist here and let those who are searching for an innovative CSS book to beware. If your a css master and are just damn bored and want flip through a picture book for 200 pages then by all means go ahead whip out your Amex, otherwise steer clear and pick up Beginning CSS Web Development and CSS Mastery.

Maybe I will have to reread this book although I think the pretty pictures won't inspire me the second go around anyway.

Good luck.

First off, this is one of the best design books around for the web designer who wants to use good code to create attractive and usable web sites. It is one of the few that does a good, no, excellent job of integrating modern HTML and CSS with good design principles. The examples represent the state of the art in CSS practices and are well paced and very well described. But more than offering some coding tricks, this book teaches solid visual design concepts and good professional workflow practices. Read the book carefully and follow the examples and you will be a better web designer.

Unfortunately, some of the book veers of into CSS 3, which isn't going to be a viable production option for a long, long time. Internet Explorer, the browser with, by far, the highest user base barely does an adequate job of supporting CSS 2, and that's with the brand new version, the first in 5 years. Including a chapter on it in this book is a waste of space. If I want a fantasy, I'll look in the fiction section.

Another quibble is in Clarke's justification for following web standards, especially when he compares building sites in Dreamweaver and hand coding. Saying that learning Dreamweaver is more difficult than learning HTML and CSS to the level needed to make it work in current browsers is plain silly. I am perfectly comfortable with either method and find that each has definite benefits. But the learning curve for hand coding is by far the steeper one. I don't have to browse the forums every week to learn new Dreamweaver workarounds as I do for CSS and Internet Explorer's shortcomings.

I've given more space here to the couple minor negatives than the numerous fine qualities of this book. Don't let my nit picking lead you to think I don't like this book. It is just that the book is so close to superb that its small faults really stand out. Transcending CSS is easily one of the top books for the web designer who wants to move from journeyman to master, maybe the best. It is well written by a highly knowledgeable designer, well structured, well paced and very attractive. Beginners, though, should probably start with something more basic.

This book covers all current best practices for web design, and solid methods for better workflow. a must have for the web design library.

This is not really a "code book", although it does contain many useful examples of code. It is more a manifesto for proper coding and Web design. Most of the authors ideas are excellent and really make you think about good coding methods. The middle section on newspaper layouts drags, but he rest is "must read" for web designers.

About half of the book is photographs of food, which may be inspiring to some, but perhaps needlessly increased the cost of the book...

An excellent book, not for beginners in this field. It shows how to avoid the blocky box look of the first wave of css designed web sites and how to give a kick to your creativity. Explains ways how to code what you see the way it is and not the way you think it should look, and then define the look you want.
It's a must read for anyone who is or wants to be a web designer/developer.

If you were to randomly grab a book out of the web technology section of any book store odds are you'd get a book on cascading style sheets (CSS). They're everywhere. With a flood of CSS books on the market, it's not a problem finding out how to write CSS, make it valid, standards compliant and accessible.

Being a creative person from the print world who made the transition to the web, I've had a hard time finding any sort of resource on the creative process of Web design -- which I find sort of strange. Any book on print design focuses on the creative process and spends very little time talking about applications or operating systems. Yet when it comes to Web design, it's all code and browser compatibility.

I suppose there is a reason for this. Print design has its roots in the fine arts and tends to be very visual while Web design emerged from programming and tends to be highly technical. It's basically the old "right brain" vs. "left brain" fight. So, how do we meet in the middle?

I thought I had found my answer in The Zen of CSS Design, but it fell short of my expectations. While it was good for creative inspiration, it ended up being a gallery of advanced CSS techniques without much explanation behind either the creative or technical process.

Now, with the release of the follow-up to The Zen of CSS Design, I've got my answer: Transcending CSS, The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke. This beautifully designed book is about design and not markup, and assumes that you already know about XHTML, CSS and Web standards. It goes over designing from the content out, finding inspiration, establishing a workflow, creating wireframes and prototypes, and working with grids and the box model -- allowing both sides of your brain to work together in harmony. It's about time!

Even if you only look at the pictures for inspiration, this book is a must have. As a web designer, I find that sometimes I take the easy way out and do what I know. This book will push you to go beyond your comfort level. It's not for beginners, but even a beginner can get inspired to shoot for greater heights.

Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke literally `transcends' other CSS books that I have read. Now, to bring that into context - the other books I have read were incredible books, this one just takes CSS from a different perspective than the others (so you should still read the other books too). The writing style of this book was different from other CSS books which were very instructional. Along with a different writing style came a different design. This book is designed beautifully from front cover to back. The full color photos, original artwork, sidebars, quotes, and even the way he slips in photos from other developers into newspaper articles makes this book visually pleasing.

Mr. Clarke goes down a different path and calls for true progressive enhancement. Ideally this book would not be one for beginners (and he makes this claim), but I do believe it has some great inspiration throughout. He makes a good point when he questions how progressive enhancement could be progressive if we haven't really moved anywhere in the past few years? As web developers we have many hurdles to jump when creating sites that function well across all platforms and browsers. There are certain browsers that are worse than others. However, do we simply let them hold us back or do we move forward with the browsers that are proactive and support standards. This is not to say forget the older browsers, but it does call for a higher standard of quality available to use in standards compliant browsers.

The book is divided into 4 sections:

1 - Discovery. This chapter instantly jumps into the `transcendent CSS' approach and discusses some of the different selectors and options. Most sections are brief, but get right to the point. This chapter is devoted to seeing markup in everything that you do. He advocated a `content-out' approach to your designs, where you start with a solid foundation and structure with your content and build from there. This chapter was fun as there were little `quizzes' of how you would markup different sections in a given photograph. It stretches you to really see the markup and structure first and foremost.

2 - Process. Just like the first chapter, each section was touched on briefly - but was right to the point. This chapter discusses the many processes available to building your website. Starting with content and moving to things like wireframes, The Grey Box Method, and Interactive Prototyping. He discusses best practices as you work through these processes. This chapter came to a close with a little practice session (just to get your feet wet).

3 - Inspiration. This was probably my favorite chapter of the entire book. I found that this chapter was very rich with artwork, photographs, and screenshots - oh, and some text, too. He challenges you to look beyond the web for your inspirations and designs. He brings examples to the table, as well as in-depth discussion of using a Grid in your designs. This chapter really encompassed `The Fine Art of Web Design`.

4 - Transcendence. This was a perfect way to bring this book to a close. This chapter looks to CSS3 and all of its possibilities. CSS3 may seem like a long stretch away, but it is very important to be aware of what will be available and to begin thinking creatively - prepared for what is to come. This chapter was rich with examples and screenshots of the possibilities.

As I stated earlier, this may not be a book for beginners - but it sure is full of inspiration. There are some books that you read and think `Wow, this book is going to transform the way we think about CSS' - and this book is just that. CSS Zen Garden had the same feel to it, but this is more updated. Not that you don't need other CSS books - but this book is a must read as we move forward into 2007 and years to come.

The most interesting part of this book for me was the step-by-step dissection of some nice layouts. The advice about keeping a scrapbook for inspiration on the other hand was a bit lost on me, though I did at least appreciate the inspirational pictures that are scattered throughout the book. The author emphasizes that it's okay to use features that are supported only by newer browsers, provided the site degrades gracefully, but when he starts explaining how to use features supported by no other browser but Safari (and Konqueror), that's a bit too much for me... The book also has links to some very good resources that I was unaware of and that are going to come very handy in my work as a software developer.

Andy Clark (http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ ) is one of the leading UK designers for the past 10 years and he has been at the forefront in promoting web standards and accessibility.

This is a somewhat unique CSS book in that it is not a "beginners" book nor it is a purely "advanced" book either. It is a book for web designers who know the basics of CSS who want to know how to use the full potential of CSS level 3 whether or not every browser will support every technique you use. It describes what can be done with CSS and how web layouts can be viewed as a means to provide semantic data to your viewers.

Throughout this book, Andy Clark provides beautiful illustrations and photographs of web pages, stock photos and snap shots that give the book a less "textbook" feeling and more of a slight story telling feeling. It's hard to describe, but it makes reading it more interesting and allows it to flow better. There are four main sections of the book: Discovery, Process, Inspiration, and Transcendence.

The book begins with Discovery: This section reviews many existing well designed web sites (CSS Zen Garden, Clear Left, Adacto, A List Apart, etc.) in explaining what the term "Transcendent CSS" really means. These principles such as not all browsers see the same design, use all available CSS selectors, use CSS3 where possible, se JavaScript and the DOM, avoid sing hacks and filters, and use semantic name conventions.

The next section is Process: This section talks about how to create a perfect workflow. The process of working with wireframes, using prototypes, how to build proper layouts, organizing CSS code, styling navigation and understanding elements of typography are all discussed.

The section Inspiration is my favorite section. This section really focuses on design techniques like grid-based design. The design technique really as the author states is the only way to properly design with CSS. Andy goes through many sample sites and breaks down each design in a grid and shows how it was created and with what markup and CSS. I never found a CSS book before that really explains from a designer's perspective their view of design. The author also goes into other design with print and media to get other points of view to design techniques. The most important thing about the book is that it doesn't just talk about theory; it shows actual CSS code snippets to really explain it. Well, done.

The final section is Transcendence which focuses heavily on the new ideas and techniques of using CSS3 and positioning and floats. Absolute positioning is first discussed with emphasis on positioning images, image zooming, and creative floating. There are so many different techniques and examples in this section it will take you months to properly go through them all. A great section as well.

Well, this book I think is a new beginning (hopefully) to CSS books especially with the new browsers (Firebox 2 and IE7) supporting some of the new CSS3 techniques that make designing web layouts fun again. I hope you get as much out of this book as I know I will. A great buy and a must buy!