Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke

Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design Reviews

• 
  Spike

  Probably a bit dated right now, but during its time it was ahead of the game. The author is pretty genius with CSS basics and principles, as well as future forward thinking in terms of design and use of grids.
• 
  Michael

  Much more than a book on CSS
• 
  Matt

  If you've ever considered web design as art, /Transcending CSS/ may be the book for you. I found the fine art aspects a little heavy-handed, and the section on finding inspiration may, for the average engineer, invoke a bit of eye-rolling at times. (Not that it's not a valid point, but spending 85 pages on it is a bit much.) But, once you get around some of the drawbacks, there is some very useful information in this book.
  
  The main focus of the book is to encourage the separation of presentation and content. While this mantra is often repeated as the justification for CSS, Clarke points out that it is rarely, if ever, adequately followed. In that vein, Clarke takes the reader through the design of a few static web pages; boiling the content down to their cores of lists, paragraphs, and headings; and then working out in style sheets how to make the content look like the designer wants. There are some interesting uses of CSS used to pull these off that make this section of the book a bit of a page turner. (At least for the web usability geeks out there.)
  
  The first part of the book reveals /why/ it is so important to separate the presentation layer from the content. Clarke contends that the Internet isn't just for computers anymore, and it will be far easier to write a new style sheet for Internet-enabled phones and PDAs than to force those users to view the "standard" version of the page (and potentially lose those users when the site is completely unusable), or to write a completely new page just for those users (increasing the costs in both implementing and maintaining the site).
  
  All in all, I found /Transcening CSS/ to be a bit of a chore to get all the way through, but there is enough here to make it a worthwhile read, if you don't mind just skimming some of the more less technical parts.
• 
  Fuzzy Gerdes

  There's code here and there on my personal website that goes back to 1994 or so, when I built my first webpage by hand and hosted it on my personal account on schenectady.ecn.purdue.edu (try typing that five times fast). And HTML 1.1 served me just fine for the next 10 years. Right around the time that I would have probably needed to really dive in and modernize things around here, I moved much of the site over to MovableType, which took care of enough that I could put it off for a little bit longer. But there are things I want to do with my site that are going to require that I get up to, say, 2003 web design standards. So I'm slowly getting up to speed on the current state of web design.
  
  This book is not a beginner's how-to level book to CSS, and so I didn't understand half of how I would actually implement the examples given. But I really glad I read it first, because it gave me a lot of great ideas about how to approach the workflow of redesigning my site(s), rather than just diving in and replicating my old tables structure with a bunch of divs and calling it a day.
• 
  Chris

  I started getting a few CSS projects at work this spring, and I was like, "uhhh." Cascading style sheets for the web had always sounded really boring.. or at least, more of an organizational tool than a design one. So I went to Barnes & Noble one day at lunch to find a good reference book and came across Transcending CSS. I've read other reviews of this book that describe it as career-changing, and that really was true in my case. I've spent the past four months reading anything and everything I can about CSS because the doors that Andy Clarke opens in Transcending CSS are just too cool to close.
• 
  Jonathan

  I was disappointed with this book.
  
  There was far too much name dropping. Mr Clarke only seemed to draw real-world examples from within a narrow spectrum of the web design community, which felt to me like navel gazing.
  
  Although the book is prettier than your average web design book, too many pages were devoted to photo montages that seem like filler.
  
  I gleaned a few tips from the book, particularly regarding semantic CSS class and id names, but not enough to justify the cover price.
  
  I know many web designers view this book as some sort of bible, but for me it fell far short of expectations.
• 
  Jason Constantine

  Excellent guide on some simple but effective methods of designing sites that takes into account other, oft neglected details. This doesn't exactly teach you a ton concerning actual css itself rather its more of a compendium of best practices, approaches, resources, and ways to smartly craft a proper site design.
  
  One thing I wasn't terribly keen on is that some of the content makes web design and css far too out there than it actually is, as if CSS and web design is some sort of aspect regulated in zen. It's not, its far from it. I know, because I happen to be an actual martial artiste and there's nothing 'spiritual' about web development (sorry to anybody who disagrees).
• 
  Charles

  Probably the most famous web design book written to date is Bulletproof Web Design. I would say that for techniques and web design theory this book will be quoted and hoarded by web designers. The book itself has already gained world wide recognition by being translated into five different languages (possibly making it one of the top, if not the most read web design book to date). The author is a member of the W3C and currently developing CSS3.
  
  If you are a web designer, not reading this book is not an option.
• 
  Michael

  This took me further down the street where
  The Zen of CSS Design left me. It's career-altering and interesting to me; probably not for you.
• 
  igmuska

  If you are a web designer, this book will increase your understanding of semantic designing. By using mainly div block statements in your html code, you are limiting yourself to other html that are often better choices.
• 
  Xavier

  Un libro que sin duda alguna, me ayudó a activar un interruptor interno con respecto a cómo visualizar el CSS. Lo recomiendo ampliamente para todo aquel que quiera adentrarse a las aguas del desarrollo estándar de HTML/CSS.
• 
  Christopher Bishop

  Great CSS theory, but only for CSS experts.
• 
  Patrick Wood

  Has great CSS stuff
• 
  Fernando

  Great book!
• 
  Ronald Huxley

  Great book for web designers. I was the artist whose work is featured on the cover of the book. See more at
  http://ronhuxleyartist.blogspot.com
  
• 
  Paolo

  Non solo CSS, come il titolo potrebbe far pensare, ma un vero e proprio manuale di progettazione per il web, ricco di fonti e spunti di ispirazione.
• 
  etherealfire

  My paperback