Handcrafted CSS is by one of the web design industries’ most established authors, Dan Cederholm. He is the man behind Bulletproof Web Design, Web Standards Solutions, Simple Bits and most recently Dribbble.
Dan is well known for his clean markup, embracing advanced CSS and his love of ampersands so I was really looking forward to this book.
Handcrafted CSS is for the CSS designer who wants to go the extra mile.
Who is it for?
This book would be more for intermediate/advanced designers, which is great as there are so many ‘beginner’ books out there it was nice to read a book that just got stuck in.
It’s for designers who care about the little things - the clean markup, the grid, the 1 pixels and the ampersands.
What's in it?
- Simple tricks for dealing with everyday CSS obstacles
- Bulletproof CSS3 techniques
- The fluid grid
- Floats (and clearing them)
- Frameworks (and crafting your own)
- Small details that can make a great design
- Stuff about ampersands
Verdict
I really enjoyed this book. I was able to learn from it, advance current techniques and be inspired by it.
It’s easy to relate to everything outlined in the book. Some things were a reminder while others I had never thought of before. Truly inspired to go away and start crafting something special.
Not only is the content good, even how the book is laid out is gorgeous with well spaced pages, nice formatting and an embossed front cover.
Highly recommended.
Pull quotes
...the larger the target, the quicker and easier it is to get there.
but the important thing to remember here is that this method degrades beautifully...The design is intact. It's functional and readable.
...the rounded corners in Mozilla- and WebKit- based browsers are visual rewards rather than necessary requirements.
The problem with the fixed-width approach to interface design is that it's asking the user to adapt to the design rather than the reverse.
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