CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems

From the back of the book's (faux) jacket - "Lea Verou is an Invited Expert in the W3C CSS Working Group, the committee that designs the CSS language". Clearly, the author knows her CSS. The real question is, "Can she communicate her brilliance to others?". I answer, "Yes". The book is broken up into 47 short chapters. Each chapter begins by introducing a common, UI-centric problem and then explores one or more solutions to that problem, including the pros and cons of each solution. The code snippets are beautiful in their simplicity, and there are links to css demos sprinkled throughout. The focus of the book is "Better solutions to everyday web design problems", and to describe it as a series of how-to's would be accurate. But in the course of revealing practical solutions to everyday problems, Verou provides just the right amount of explanation as to why the solutions work and what the tradeoffs are. If you're wanting to do a deep dive and really understand CSS, this book will give you plenty of jumping off points.I am a .NET developer by trade. I don't have any professional front-end web experience, and that's why I picked up this book. I wanted to build up my skills and understanding in this domain, and this book has been an effective resource in doing that.

I rarely leave product reviews, but I had to in this case in the hope the author may see this. THANK YOU SO MUCH.I've had an annoying UI bug that I've spent hours on and once my solutions started getting most heinous I decided to live with it instead of writing ungodly amounts of code for something that should be resolved with 1 line of css. For a separate issue a coworker recommended this book. (I couldn't wrap my head around how some css shapes are defined, the math involved etc.) While browsing chapters I found chapter 7, the section titled "Taming table column widths", and it changed my life. It had a great explanation on what the problem was with pictures and diagrams of exactly the issue I was seeing and also the solution had a similar explanation and picture of how the css property fixes the issue (More so the ramifications of the fix.)The book itself is a piece of art. It has been a joy browsing through the well laid out sections, beautiful typography, and helpful graphics. I have to recommend this book to anyone who does any amount of web design. There is a treasure trove of information in here that no amount of bing/google can compare. 5/5 - would buy again.

Lea is a CSS magician & a Font-end Wizard. She has amazed the world with possibilities of HTML5, CSS, and SVG through her "CSS Secrets Talks". She is also an invited Expert in CSS Working Group.With this book, she pushes the boundaries of what could be possible with simple CSS properties.The Book starts with how the CSS standards are developed. Then, Lea goes on to reveal 32 CSS secrets spread across 47 chapters. Although some chapters do require a prerequisite (sometimes another chapter from the same book),the chapters can be read in a non-linear way.The book focusses on the possibilities of achieving a CSS problem with various innovative ways. For instance, she presents 6 ways of vertically centering an element. It also explains the process of finding a solution and draws light on the most suitable solution.What really sets this book apart from the other books is the "casual conversational" tone she maintains throughout the book. Not only language, but the content motivates the reader to read more without getting bored.For a book this amazing, which needs to be preserved, I found the paper quality a little substandard. Hopefully, O'Reilly will fix this issue soon :)

The title should not be "everyday web," but "extraordinary web." Excellent book for experts or advanced users of CSS. The book is easy to read and should be in your collection if you're into CSS, but understanding requires some effort. For example she likes to use the pythagorean theorem to find angles, which is great, but perhaps some basic refreshers examples would be helpful for those of us that need it. Although this is not important and has nothing to do with the number of review stars, but the kitten images can be a little too much. Although they are cute, it's not so cool on the train when someone looks over at your kindle. I suppose this friendly style in the book fools you into thinking that the books' content is easy. Overall she really knows her stuff but the book would be perfect if it also contained more basic examples and informational tables to keep track of things since the book is very technical. I will have to re-read it and practice on my desktop afterward to help grasp the material. This material shouldn't be taken so lightly, it's really not a book you can read on the Kindle on the way to work and expect to understand it all.

I've been working with CSS for many years, but this book really upped my game. There were so many "aha!" moments for things I'd continuously struggled with, and so many techniques for effects I didn't even realize were possible using only css. (Who knew there was so much you could do with gradients?) And it never read like a boring, stuffy tech book -- the writing was always accessible and lively. In fact, I read it as my bedtime reading, and it would often keep me up into the night! My only quibble was her over-use of the shortcut syntax. While I realize that shortcuts are best-practice, it was sometimes difficult to understand where, say, background-origin was set in the shortcut when I'd never used that property before. It would've been more helpful to have everything spelled out in long-hand as I was trying to work through the examples. That said, once I'd go to the dabblet to play around, it was always made clear. A must-read for people who already know the css basics!