The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

List Price: $39.95 Discount Price: $23.56

Customer Reviews:

Very helpful book [Posted on 2008-05-21]
I am a web designer by career. And when our company began moving into CSS, I thought I'd better find some good books. This one was fantastic. It's filled with a lot of examples and tricks that not only taught me about CSS at a level I could quickly grasp, but it also provided examples that I could actually pull and use in my projects.

I own other sitepoint books such as "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" and "CSS the Ultimate Reference" and they are all fantastic. I'm beginning to think that sitepoint is a great source for knowledge. I recommnend this book highly.

A Good Guide With Poor Planning [Posted on 2008-06-06]
This book has some good examples, and the way that the author describes the code is very well done. I question the overall value of this book, though, because this book is designed with neither the beginner, nor the advanced user in mind.

Ms. Andrews begins her book by making an incredibly quick overview of how CSS works and what it's for, but by no means explains it in enough detail for a beginner to really catch on. As she progresses through the question and answer format, she will quickly lose whatever intended audience she thought she had: the first half of the book is painfully simple, the second half is too advanced for the beginners, and probably too basic for advanced users.

It is difficult to use the guide as a direct reference because of it's format...an unfortunate problem that comes of the way she chose to write this book.

While I do feel that this guide increased my knowledge of CSS, I can't say that the few little tricks I learned were necessarily worth the money I spent on the guide, and that serious users should consider another option.

Great Buy [Posted on 2008-06-20]
For those of us who are beginners or intermediate programmers of CSS, I would recommend this book. From beginning use to advanced hints and tips, this book has something for everyone. Any book that helps me to learn even one item more than I already knew is a benefit to my library, and you can't beat Amazon.com for price!

So Far...Not Very Good [Posted on 2008-06-29]
After reading two great Sitepoint books* cover to cover and returning to them again and again, I thought "The CSS Anthology" would be another good purchase.

Unfortunately, this book makes learning web design as frustrating as the other two books made it easy. I'm on the verge of returning it.

The writing is not as simple, clever or memorable (important in a How-to) as the other books. Instead, the author tends to complicate rather simple concepts and blur the lines between topics.

I'm at about an intermediate level with CSS. The few solutions here that aren't too basic are hopelessly complicated by bad writing. It is easy to waste a day trying to get something from this book to work, simply because the subject was not well presented.

Because "The CSS Anthology" is not designed to be read straight through- I find myself using internet tutorials to find the same information. Not only do the Internet solutions tend to work better, they're easier to find and easier to understand.

I'll probably try to get my money back. Skip this one from the Sitepoint library.

*"Build Your Own Websites the Right Way Using HTML & CSS" and "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"- Both excellent for beginners

Truly "Essential" If You've Not Been Around the Block A Hundred Times [Posted on 2008-07-03]
CSS is difficult to master, and most who have have done so over a period of years, through trial and error, and from picking up tips one by one from the community of practitioners. Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology doesn't offer much for the CSS veterans (I found only 1 tip I didn't know), but it's is absolutely full of all the good stuff that we CSS authors treasure and, of course, USE on a daily basis. The best part? Most instances in this book follow Web standards--you won't find that to be true with many other CSS books.

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