pxl·eight

A few days ago, I met my new neighbors across the hall, one of whom works for a large, multi-national computer company and does web design as a sideline business. We had a nice chat in the elevator about the web, design practices and more in the 15 second ride down to the main floor.

Yesterday afternoon, I get a knock on my door, and sure enough, it’s my neighbor from across the hall. He asks me to come over to take a look at some graphic design work he’s been chipping away at, and we get to talking about design again. He asks me about tables vs CSS, and being the web standards advocate (read: junkie) I am, I strongly suggest to move away from tabular page layouts and embrace CSS like a rich uncle. Or at the very least, as a viable alternative to bad code and poor accessibility.

He asked me which books I would recommend if he wanted to learn more about CSS. I rhyme off a few (starting with Eric Meyer’s CSS books). He points out that he has Eric Meyer on CSS, which is a great start to learning. I also point out that there is ALOT of information available on the Internet at no charge. I also offer my email address to him in case he has any questions, ’cause I’m good like that. :)

Having returned to my rather messy apartment (my wife and I are moving next weekend), I started thinking about which particular CSS books are well worth reading. So, for all of you out there that are reading my journal (all 3 of you), I decided to put together a list of CSS books that I’ve read, or books that I will be buying in the near future. (Please note: These books were listed in the order I thought of them, and not in order of best to worst. They are all equally good and come highly recommended.)

• Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition (Eric Meyer)
• Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer’s Reference (Eric Meyer)
• CSS Pocket Reference (Eric Meyer)
• Eric Meyer On CSS (Eric Meyer)
• More Eric Meyer on CSS (Eric Meyer)
• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Andy Budd, Simon Collison, and Cameron Moll)
• The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag)
• HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Elizabeth Castro)
• HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Rachel Andrew and Daniel Shafer)
• Bulletproof Web Design (Dan Cederholm)
• Web Standards Solutions (Dan Cederholm)
• Designing With Web Standards, Second Edition (Jeffrey Zeldman)

This is by no means an exhaustive list, there are so many out CSS books available today, that it would be hard to list them all. Please don’t feel offended if I haven’t included your book in this list. I did some quick research, and found some of the most popular books. If I have left out a book, I apologize. By all means, please add a link to the book website or the product page on Amazon.

Likewise if you have this book, please let me know how you liked it (or didn’t, however the case may be)… Your comments will impact (to a large degree) whether I or other people purchase these books.