Book Review: Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3
“Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3″ is a new great book from New Riders (Voices that Matter) by two CSS authorities: Stephanie Sullivan, co-lead of Adobe Task Force for WaSP and wrote teh CSS layouts included with Dreamweaver CS3, and Greg Rewis, Group Manager of Creative Solutions Evangelism at Adobe.
The book begins with some background information on the (X)HTML Document, CSS and the concept of laying out HTML pages with CSS. Three of the seven chapters give a step-by-step examples (with downloadable sample files) for a Fixed Layout, Liquid Layout, and Elastic Layout Web sites. In Chapter 4, the authors demonstrates how to use Dreamweaver CS3 to migrate a Table-based Layout to CSS Layout. In Chapter 6, Stephanie and Greg show how to build a Gallery Site with CSS and Spry.
The book has a very pleasant style and layout with color images and side notes. Even with its technical context, the examples were very easy to read and follow, even if you’re not doing the examples online. Stephanie and Greg also presented a few great tips and tricks for using Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS, eg, the faux column technique which gives the illusion of two equal height columns.
I’ve been a Dreamweaver user for a few years. Late last year I learned about Dreamweaver CS3 (through Adobe’s eSeminar series) and learned CSS from another great book by O’Reilly called “Learning Web Design “. It was a good, but rough, background to start designing websites with Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS. I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time. I read three chapters in the first week and was able to learn a lot of new techniques and tips I already used on my next design project.
However, a few things can be added to this book to make it even better. Definition and explanation of CSS best practices and Web standards would be helpful, specially in understanding some design decisions in the examples. Also, Dreamweaver CS3 has many many choices for HTML layout. This book only covers three of them. It would be useful to give an overview of these layout and some pros and cons of each to help in deciding on the layout when working on a project. Another useful information to include in this book would be a Resources and References section.
Overall, this is a great book for anyone serious about designing professional websites with Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS.
Stephanie Sullivan said,
May 20, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
Hi Lamees… thanks for the nice review.
I just wanted to point out a couple things you may not have realized based on what you wrote…
There are actually 6 chapters… Chapter one, as you mentioned is a review of the principles we felt people needed to understand to build solid, standards-based layouts. And chapter three shows how to transform a site that is currently in tables to CSS using DW.
However, the remaining 4 chapters each use one of the 5 types of starter layouts. (I built 32 starter layouts for DW, but there are only 5 basic types in all. Fixed, Liquid, Elastic, Hybrid and Absolute Positioning. I’m not a fan of using the absolute positioning layouts period. So we chose to only show the other 4 types in the book.) Chapter 6, the one that shows how to make Spry unobtrusive, is actually based on the hybrid layout - so you might have missed that.
I appreciate your feedback on what you’d like to see. Alas, we went over our page count as it was. LOL But maybe we can talk them into more if we ever do another version. BTW, there’s a resource page on the book site - for all the URL’s used in the book - http://www.w3conversions.com/book/resources.html. And another one on my personal site for things I have found useful over the years or that I might talk about in one of my speaking sessions - http://www.w3conversions.com/css_resources.html Not sure if those are what you are looking for, but they might help.
Again thanks… and happy coding… Stef.
Webbright Consulting said,
May 20, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
Hi Stephanie…. thank you so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment… I’m very honored and excited to hear back from the author herself!
Also, thanks for the clarification on the book coverage of DW layouts. I think even a little overview like you shared here would have helped. I know you’re just happy to finish with this version of the book (congratulations) but if (when) you work on another one, definitely don’t take out any of the current content.. it’s all very valuable, just try to add more extras (as I mentioned) even if you have to increase it’s price. I know I’m getting more my money worth with this book.
Thanks for sharing the online resources. I’ll definitely check them out. I know you also have a great website with valuable references.
Again thanks for a great book… I know I’ll continue learning from it.
Best wishes,
Lamees