Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation by Owen Briggs, Steven Champeon, Eric Costello, and Matt Patterson 2002, Glasshaus, 289pp. US$24.49
This is the third CSS book I've reviewed in the past two months, and you'd think that I'd be getting tired of them. The truth is, however, that CSS is such an exciting leap forward for web developers that I'm just happy to celebrate another book on the subject.
Glasshaus is a relative newcomer to the field of computer book publishing. This is their fourth title, following books on usability, accessibility, and designing web menus.
The multiple author approach is becoming more and more popular these days. The advantage to the writer is evident. Writing a few chapters is less time consuming than taking months off to write an entire book. The advantage to the reader is less clear. Fearing a book written by a committee, I am pleased to say that the book holds together, perhaps due to each author's focus on a specific area of expertise.
Eric Costello provides the introduction as well as contributing a chapter on "Attaching CSS to Your Markup." Though his explanation of the differences between inline styles, embedded and external stylesheets was useful, I was a little disappointed that Eric didn't contribute a few more chapters, as I've learned quite a lot from his excellent web site at www.glish.com.
Steven Champeon contributes two fascinating chapters on the definition of document structure along with the issues surrounding the history and development of markup languages. This is probably the biggest plus this book has going for it, since I don't believe I've read this sort of material in any other book on CSS or HTML.
Owen Briggs writes the bulk of the "how-to" material. This is clear and well-written, and I especially appreciated the chapter entitled "Fundamentals," in which he patiently explains essential concepts like inheritance, the cascade, and the box model. Also useful is the chapter on "Cross-Browser CSS" which explicitly deals with coding for Netscape 4, while also promoting the Web Standards Project's Browser Upgrade Initiative.
Matt Patterson's contribution consists of one comprehensive chapter on typography. A recent graduate of Reading University's Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, Matt works as an independent typographer. How wonderful that such a career still exists, and even more wonderful that Matt is bringing his knowledge to bear on the web. One of the great promises of CSS is that we will finally have a larger measure of control over the presentation of type in our HTML pages.
Overall, this book is a useful addition to the library of CSS references. In particular, the chapters on the history of markup languages (Champeon), the application of presentation markup to document structure (Champeon), the fundamental concepts of CSS (Briggs), and typography (Patterson) distinguish Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation from its peers.