Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design features the real-world web design solutions of an all-star cast of cascading style sheet (CSS) experts -- Christopher Schmitt, Mark Trammell, Ethan Marcotte, Todd Dominey, Dunstan Orchard and Jeffrey Zeldman. While most books of this size (434 pages) could hardly handle so many cooks with their spoons in the broth, this book is structured around individual web design projects using CSS. And, as such, individual authors handle individual chapters based on their expertise. For example, Ethan Marcotte, a long-time member of the Web Standards projects, gives the reader good advice in chapter two, “Best Practices for XHTML and CSS.”

However, it is chapters three through seven that really impress. Dunstan Orchard walks us through complete CSS solutions used on blogger.com and how layouts were built for ESPN.com, Todd Dominey shows us how they created drop shadows and menus via CSS at the PGA Championship site, Mark Trammel details the University of Florida CSS site revisions, and Ethan Marcotte interviews Dan Cederholm of FastCompany.com on how CSS can be used to create a three-column layout. Each chapter is interesting and practical information and appropriate graphics illustrate how to achieve similar effects on your own.

The final two chapters walk the reader through designing a CSS-based site for accessibility – one of the best treatments on this subject that I’ve yet encountered -- and a chapter by CSS-guru Christopher Schmitt on “Bringing it all Together.” My greatest criticism of the book is actually with this final chapter by Schmidt. It’s a very well-written, from-beginning-to-end description of how to design a CSS website. But as such, it seems to ignore the rest of the text altogether. It feels like a separate, stand-alone mini-book from the master of CSS, tacked on at the end. 

Overall, the individual chapter-structure is interesting for designers wanting to either see how an individual project was tackled (i.e., U of F, ESPN, etc.) or to see how variably and creatively CSS can be used by different designers. As such, the book is designed for individuals already well-versed in HTML/XHTML and with at least a cursory knowledge of what CSS can do.

Additionally, the book is presented as more of a thought-provoking, problem-solving text than a how-to manual. For example, if you want to know how to produce fluid-width rounded box corners using CSS, check out the excellent graphics and instructions on pages 107 through 118. However, if you tried to find “fluid” or “rounded corners” in the index you’re not going to find either (you will find a reference to the pages under “box” in the index but that’s rather vague). This is probably not the first resource I would use when trying to work out a specific CSS strategy – largely for the way the book is structured and indexed. I would have liked to have seen a more specific index or a few pages added at the end for at least a basic CSS “cheat sheet” appendix.

However, before I begin my next site which will heavily employ CSS, I will probably review the strategies identified in chapters three through seven to see if any of those projects can inform my project. And I’ve already bookmarked the pages on rounded corners.