Smashing CSS by Eric Meyer
Smashing CSS is the first book I’ve read from Eric Meyer. After hearing so much about him though, I had high hopes his book would be awesome, and I wasn’t disappointed.
This book was pretty awesome, so much so, that I learned several new things in the first couple of chapters (and I thought I knew everything about CSS!). I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
The Basics
Smashing CSS is 304 pages of full colored pages printed on high quality paper. The book was a comfortable weight, although the print was a bit small, and was easy to read anywhere I went. The 304 pages were made up mostly of images, so it only took me a couple of hours to read the entire thing. However, it is choke full of very helpful information, so don’t think it’s just a picture book.
The Good
Within the first few pages, I learned about several selectors I never even knew or thought about! I was able to use them right away in my client projects, so that made the book even more enjoyable as I went along. The book starts out with some advanced selectors, then you move into fancy techniques, layout issues and more.
This book, while not a comprehensive review of CSS, is perfect for both advanced users and beginners. There’s something in there for everyone, even if you think (like I did) that you knew most of CSS. While I’ve been bored with other CSS books because I never learn anything new, this wasn’t the case with Smashing CSS. The book was easy to read and the pages and chapters flowed nicely.
The Bad
There wasn’t much of anything bad in this book, but more of an annoyance. Whoever did the editing did a poor job. I found tons of misspellings, grammar mistakes, missing image captions and even a messed up image itself (It was an image showing a normal state and the hover state – except they were both normal states.). The print was a bit small to get used to, and book sort of ended suddenly, without a goodbye or conclusion. But these were minor annoyances.
Other than that though, there was nothing at all wrong with the book.
Worth Buying?
Most definitely. You’d be missing out on a wealth of great information. This book is a must have for any front-end developer!
You can find Smashing CSS at Amazon for $26.29.
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
I read his book called Eric Meyer on CSS whch was good that many years ago now and that was really good i will look into this one also…
Thank you very much Amber, I think I will buy this book for me as my christmas gift
Do it! I promise it’s worth it
I’m so used to seeing college textbooks when it comes to anything computer related. So seeing good books for under crazy prices, like $90-200, seems like a blessing. I’m going to see if this is up at the B&N near me.
Yep, there are a ton of awesome coding books that are in the range of $15-$30 and you can normally find them even cheaper than that if you look on Half.com. You might not find this one yet on there because it’s so new, but then tend to come out with new/slightly used books very quickly and often more than 50% off.
Let’s see here…. Book by Eric Meyer. Check. Book by Smashing Magazine. Check. Book by Eric Meyer and Smashing Magazine. Triple Check (skip right over double check – it’s that good). Like Amber said, it’s not perfect (what is really?) but this book offers tips for any skill range to immediately pickup and improve their skills. The idea of using a diagnostic sheet (page 31-32) is worth the cost of this book alone.
I can’t wait to read some of his other work as well. I have a TON of web dev books on my wishlist. I bought Hardboiled Web Design but have yet to receive it
Thanks for the review Amber. Wasn’t aware of this great looking book, and will definitely be picking up a copy!
My copy of Hardboiled arrived yesterday, and I have to say it was well worth the wait. ;o)
Darn it…I’m still waiting on mine…where do you live?
England.
Infact, I got sent two copies in error! The rogue in me briefly contemplated making a cheeky, quick £ by flogging said extra copy – then my conscience got the better of me.
Hope your copy has showed up, and you’re getting stuck in.
Hey, Amber—thanks so much for the great review! I’m really glad you like the book, but chagrined that there were so many errors to find. If you wouldn’t mind overmuch, could you e-mail me at the address I used to comment here and let me know what you found so I can get them corrected for future printings? I’ll try to make it worth your time.
Thanks Eric, I’m going through the book now
I confirm there are is some gold information there even if I thought I knew most of the CSS, myself too.
I noticed the misspells and the hovered image, which can confuse a beginner, but those are very small issues compared with the high quality content.
I recommend it too, especially it is a fun read!
I actually just came across this post when trying to find that post you wrote awhile back about REWORK and 37 Signals and since I noticed that you reviewed “Smashing CSS”, you caught my curiosity. I absolutely love Smashing WordPress and was literally in the book store skimming through Smashing CSS last week. I didn’t actually purchase it so you can take my feedback for what it is but I thought it looked like a purchase that would be well worth it. The only reason I didn’t by it is because I’ve already got too many books in the queue so I had to resist.
@Amber You’re always one step ahead of me on the latest and greatest reads I just started Smashing Book 2 which I’m loving. I’ve also been on the Amazon waiting list for Smashing JavaScript for months. It looks like it should be another good addition my library and I might even get it before you : ) Anyways, thanks for sharing.
I’ve just started reading the Smashing Book 2 as well