CSS in Depth

CSS in Depth is an excellent book. It is a code-along experience with its examples and resources over on github (Google "CSS in Depth Github files" or something like that). In this book, I learned more about HTML, CSS, and even some more about JavaScript. It is one of the best kinds of books on web development. I recommend it highly.It starts with the most essential components: cascade, specificity, inheritance, relative units, and the box model. These fundamentals are often easily missed when a web developer is teaching oneself. Locking in these fundamentals really sets the stage for success. As a full stack developer with over 7 years of experience, I greatly appreciate this part of the book. So many bad habits in web design form out of a lack of knowledge on the core CSS rules. This section showed me my own bad habits (especially in the area of specificity) and helped me to understand the core of CSS much better.After that, the author goes over layout techniques, from floats to flexbox to CSS grid, as well as responsive design. These are vital for any web developer when building modern web applications and when considering what browsers they are going to support. I found this section to be useful; at the same time, knowing how many different ways people have come up with techniques to lay out the web is both impressive and frustrating. Fortunately, we are at a point in the history of the web that old methodologies (table-based layouts, display table layouts, and float-based layouts) are becoming a relic of the past. Even legacy browsers like IE have some support for more modern layout techniques. This section is like the best kind of history lesson: it makes sense of the present by explaining the past and showing how far we've come. Good stuff.Then, the author talks about CSS at scale. I work on an enterprise web application, and I believe the author has done us a favor by covering this topic. So often, when multiple teams work on disparate projects or even on one large project together, CSS gets duplicated, and maintaining these systems can be a big headache. Keeping web application CSS organized and intentional (using an organizational practice such as BEM) and providing a pattern library can go a long way to encouraging CSS reuse and making an enterprise web application more successful. With that said, I think these techniques should be a part of any web developer's toolkit, since they foster collaboration. Great section!The final section of the book goes over what the author calls Advanced Topics: backgrounds, shadows, blend modes, contrast, color (HSL, anyone?), spacing, typography, animations, the list goes on. I enjoyed this section quite a bit, because coding along with the book and watching the different techniques in action feels good.I took a very long time to read this book. I read sections in bursts, and I spent time thinking about and applying what I learned during the workday. I even did side projects where I applied what I learned. I don't have a recommendation as to how quickly you should read this book. It depends on your best way to learn. With that said, if you choose to read this book, I do recommend you type up the examples he provides and run them on a web browser.While reading, I followed along with VS Code, a free development application that is somewhere between a text editor and a full IDE. It's awesome, and unless you have a preferred code editor already, I highly recommend it. I was throwing down new web applications left and right during the book, and I used the "Live Server" extension, as well as Emmet snippets, to quickly get from the written page to the rendered web page ;)I remember the author tweeting about being in the process of writing this book. I was excited at the idea of this book and felt like a modern publication on this topic was desperately needed. Well, I'm done reading it, and it was well worth my time. I keep a copy on my row at work, and I share it with my teammates so we can all learn from it. I'm sure I'll be reading it again in the future.As a final note, I like the author's teaching style. I would really like to see an online learning resource that teaches the way this book does and provides many, many more full example projects, more than a book could reasonably provide. Coding alongside the author was vital. It gets CSS into your fingers and gives you your own internal understanding of it all.Read the book. Make awesome web stuff. You can do it.

The material is very good but presented in a very disjointed way. First case in point, an example of three conlicting styles is presented on pg. 6, and with no explanation the author writes that "the second declaration...wins." Then he presents 5 pages of other material before giving the explanation.Despite the material being good it is, however, repetitive. For instance the author admonishes more than once against using ids and/or !important. This is unnecessary and merely pads the size of the book, making it more exdpensive than needed.

True to its title, this book is hands down the most in-depth yet practical and easy to follow book on the subject when read from cover to cover. As a backend software developer who used to struggle in the past with numerous quirks, hacks and workarounds inherent in CSS and lack of consensus around best practices for code organization, class naming and such, I found the way most other books treat the subject frustrating. But this book really excelled in mixing the discussion of some fundamental concepts that are rarely discussed in other introductory tutorials with solid advice on how to put them to use as you write CSS. The combination of this book, MDN and Google's web fundamental guides will build your career as a front-end engineer on a strong foundation.

What this book is: A very well-written book about professional application of CSS.If you are an experienced CSS designer looking to extend you knowledge and techniques, this book will show you some creative ideas most likely new to you. It will take you in-depth into a few CSS properties may not have yet fully explored. This is what is purports to be, and it delivers. I spent a few hours with it last night just after it arrived from Amazon, and couldn't put it down.What this book is not: A primer on CSS for a beginning web-designer. Nor is it a textbook. Nor is it a complete CSS reference. So, don't buy if you are looking for any of these.

I'm using CSS since Im 12 (20 years ago), long before many flex box and grid existed. Always picked up what I needed to know from here and there.This great book has strengthen up my base knowledge and was super useful for me.Highly recommended.

Beautifully written!

A good source for improving CSS skills.If you think you know much about CSS, my advice, read this book. You won't regret.

Very good book. I have a much better understanding of css after reading this. This book should be in any frontend developers library.

This is a great book for any web developer who knows CSS moderately well, and is ready to take their skills to the next level. This is NOT a book for CSS beginners. If that's not you, learn CSS elsewhere first (and get some real-world CSS dev experience) before you take on this book.If you're an intermediate CSS developer, and you're ready to go deeper to figure out a lot of those annoying little CSS issues that drive you crazy, this book is perfect for you. Even advanced developers will probably learn a few new tricks.This book is not a comprehensive CSS deep-dive. CSS is a pretty huge topic these days, and no one book could cover _everything_ in depth. Instead, Grant offers a well written collection of insights, best practices, gotchas, and technical explanations that cover maybe ~60-70% of what most developers will actually need in real world projects. This book won't answer all your questions, but just about everything in it is worth knowing.Written in 2018, it still holds up well today (2022), as not much has really changed. My only complaint is that Grant totally ignores modern JS frameworks (React, Vue, etc.). Everything he covers is oriented towards a pure raw HTML pages. That said, it all still applies - but you'll need to decide how you want to use his insights in your modern SPA codebase.Final word: Any designer or developer who's been using CSS for a couple years will have no trouble understanding anything in this book - and will almost certainly learn at least a few things that will improve your CSS skills.

I have bourght and read nany books on CSS, but this is by far the Best... It has become My Bible of CSS...

Wer bei CSS vom Raten-und-Staunen weg will und ein solides Fundament wünscht, ist bei diesem Buch bestens aufgehoben. Es erklärt genau die kritischen Gesichtspunkte, die man auch nach reichlich praktischer Erfahrung nicht auf dem Radar hat. Es ist erstaunlich und unerwartet, ein so exzellentes Fachbuch zu finden.Das Buch ist keine Enzyklopädie, aber die Referenz sucht man sowieso online. Es deckt jedoch alle Ecken von CSS ab. Also: Unbedingte Kaufempfehlung, wenn man CSS-Frust vermeiden will.

Ich stelle nun zum x-ten Mal fest, dass viele Fachbücher in der Kindle-Version schlicht nicht zu gebrauchen sind. Ein Inhaltsverzeichnis fehlt schon mal als ganzes, was an sich schon ein no-go wäre. Zum Index muss man sich mühsam durchblättern. Klicked man dann auf ein gesuchtes Keyword, landet man irgendwo, aber sicher nicht dort, wo etwas zu diesem Keyword zu erfahren wäre.Das Traurige: Schon vor 25 Jahren gab es sehr gute E-Book Versionen von Fachbüchern als PDFs, die intern brillant verlinkt waren und mit denen man wirklich arbeiten konnte und es bis heute kann. Aber das hier? Unbrauchbar.

The Author Really knows what he is talking about, i have beeen following tutorials on Youtube and web pages, and read other books, for intermediate, and beguinner, this book is amazing, i totally recommend it, it would have saved me so mucho time and head ache