• (hreview version 0.2)
• (Reviewed on 20 July 2008 by Anthony Bailey)
• product

This is a slim (270 spacey pages) primer on robust CSS practice. It isn't a reference book, nor really a compendium of recipes; more a set of ransackable case studies through which runs a persuasive essay on how and why to do this stuff right. (The basic precept is a principled separation of concerns: define style for mark-up that is independently semantically sound, rather than hacking div after nested div into your page in order to kludge your target design.)

I bought it a couple of years ago to learn how to do CSS-based layout, and did so by coding through many of the examples. I recently read it through a second time and was again impressed by its clarity and cohesion, and by how its elegant solutions do not sacrifice practicality - hence this review and recommendation. (And apart from a few thankfully obsolete IE5-generation workarounds, the content had not dated at all: though it preaches graceful degradation, the book hasn't yet had to practise it.)