Still reading CSS Mastery. Very rich. It's much smaller (thinner) than the Head First book on XHTML+CSS I read earlier this year (only 250 pages vs 650), yet reads more slowly, because it contains much food-for-thought (regarding styling techniques).
On nearly every page, I find myself pausing to reflect .. often muttering, "I didn't know you could do that." It's a book that lends itself to study more than mere reading.
It's obvious the author (Andy Budd, from Brighton, England) is in a league of his own, having "become one with" the language (CSS).
This book begins where the Head First book left off. The first (introductory) chapter presents many of the same concepts and techniques introduced near the end of the Head First book.
The reason I originally considered skipping this book—despite its many glowing reviews—is cuz CSS Mastery is known for its expertise in dealing with (proprietary) browser quirks/bugs found in IE6.
IE7—which fixes many of these bugs/quirks—was released a year ago, so I figured everybody (like me) had since upgraded to IE7, rendering this book (more-or-less) obsolete.
Au contraire. I learned yesterday that IE6 is still the predominant version, comprising half of all browsers currently in use .. including IE7. (Found that difficult to believe, but every survey I reviewed indicated the same.)
So it looks like I need to familiarize myself with the idiosyncrasies of IE6, and therefore CSS Mastery remains relevant.
••• today's entry continues below •••
Reading this book is frustrating, cuz every time I learn a new technique, I want to stop and go re-write the site, putting my new skill(s) into practice. If you've been Radified for any length of time, you know how I like to jump in and "get messy" with new technology, which is (btw) how I learned most of what you'll find here. But I'm resisting the impulse, choosing instead to stick with the learning phase.
In fact, Budd addresses this very point on the first page. See here:
One of the best ways to learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is to jump right in and start tinkering. However, if you’re not careful, you may end up misunderstanding an important concept or building in problems for later on. In this chapter, I am going to review some basic, but often misunderstood, concepts and show you how to keep your (X)HTML and CSS clear and well structured.
I *have* however, made some minor tweaks to the homepage styling, such as increasing line-height (to 1.4 ems) and decreasing the brightness of the font you're reading (from #CCC to #A1A1A1) .. to make it a little easier on your eyes. Among other tweaks, which you might've noticed. Difficult to keep my hands off it.
For more along these lines, here's a Google search preconfigured for the query » css mastery book budd learn cascading style sheets