I've been working with CSS for many years, but this book really upped my game. There were so many "aha!" moments for things I'd continuously struggled with, and so many techniques for effects I didn't even realize were possible using only css. (Who knew there was so much you could do with gradients?) And it never read like a boring, stuffy tech book -- the writing was always accessible and lively. In fact, I read it as my bedtime reading, and it would often keep me up into the night! My only quibble was her over-use of the shortcut syntax. While I realize that shortcuts are best-practice, it was sometimes difficult to understand where, say, background-origin was set in the shortcut when I'd never used that property before. It would've been more helpful to have everything spelled out in long-hand as I was trying to work through the examples. That said, once I'd go to the dabblet to play around, it was always made clear. A must-read for people who already know the css basics!

Lea is a CSS magician & a Font-end Wizard. She has amazed the world with possibilities of HTML5, CSS, and SVG through her "CSS Secrets Talks". She is also an invited Expert in CSS Working Group.

With this book, she pushes the boundaries of what could be possible with simple CSS properties.

The Book starts with how the CSS standards are developed. Then, Lea goes on to reveal 32 CSS secrets spread across 47 chapters. Although some chapters do require a prerequisite (sometimes another chapter from the same book),the chapters can be read in a non-linear way.

The book focusses on the possibilities of achieving a CSS problem with various innovative ways. For instance, she presents 6 ways of vertically centering an element. It also explains the process of finding a solution and draws light on the most suitable solution.

What really sets this book apart from the other books is the "casual conversational" tone she maintains throughout the book. Not only language, but the content motivates the reader to read more without getting bored.

For a book this amazing, which needs to be preserved, I found the paper quality a little substandard. Hopefully, O'Reilly will fix this issue soon :)

I rarely leave product reviews, but I had to in this case in the hope the author may see this. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I've had an annoying UI bug that I've spent hours on and once my solutions started getting most heinous I decided to live with it instead of writing ungodly amounts of code for something that should be resolved with 1 line of css. For a separate issue a coworker recommended this book. (I couldn't wrap my head around how some css shapes are defined, the math involved etc.) While browsing chapters I found chapter 7, the section titled "Taming table column widths", and it changed my life. It had a great explanation on what the problem was with pictures and diagrams of exactly the issue I was seeing and also the solution had a similar explanation and picture of how the css property fixes the issue (More so the ramifications of the fix.)

The book itself is a piece of art. It has been a joy browsing through the well laid out sections, beautiful typography, and helpful graphics. I have to recommend this book to anyone who does any amount of web design. There is a treasure trove of information in here that no amount of bing/google can compare. 5/5 - would buy again.

A great collection of tips for getting more out of CSS than you ever expected was possible - Lea Verou is a CSS wizard. Many of the solutions she comes up with for common styling problems are like good riddles: ingenious and unexpected, yet they feel obvious once you know the answer.

The tips she provides are pretty specific to particular use cases of CSS. This is great for web designers/developers running into the specific problems the tips address, but not as useful for a reader looking for more of a general understanding of CSS thinking (which it clearly states is not the aim of this book).

From the back of the book's (faux) jacket - "Lea Verou is an Invited Expert in the W3C CSS Working Group, the committee that designs the CSS language". Clearly, the author knows her CSS. The real question is, "Can she communicate her brilliance to others?". I answer, "Yes". The book is broken up into 47 short chapters. Each chapter begins by introducing a common, UI-centric problem and then explores one or more solutions to that problem, including the pros and cons of each solution. The code snippets are beautiful in their simplicity, and there are links to css demos sprinkled throughout. The focus of the book is "Better solutions to everyday web design problems", and to describe it as a series of how-to's would be accurate. But in the course of revealing practical solutions to everyday problems, Verou provides just the right amount of explanation as to why the solutions work and what the tradeoffs are. If you're wanting to do a deep dive and really understand CSS, this book will give you plenty of jumping off points.

I am a .NET developer by trade. I don't have any professional front-end web experience, and that's why I picked up this book. I wanted to build up my skills and understanding in this domain, and this book has been an effective resource in doing that.

Absolutely fantastic. A must-read for web designers and front-end developers. It's packed with actionable ideas and techniques, many of which I'd never seen before. (Context: I've been a web developer since 1999ish, co-created the Django web framework and have been wrestling with CSS for 15 years or so.)

Each chapter presents a specific web design "problem," along with a CSS solution (and sometimes multiple solutions). Some are simple, others are quite complex. Many are quite clever and will make you think of CSS differently. It's well-written and beautifully designed, with full-color pages and tons of informative footnotes.

The best part is that Lea talks through her thought process in developing each technique, "teaching a man to fish." In that sense, this book is great on two levels: it'll teach you specific techniques, and it'll teach you how to think when developing your *own* techniques for future web design problems.

One of the five books I keep within arm's reach at all times while I'm working.

This is an excellent book. It's very well written, has great examples, and is easy to read.

Lea does a very good job communicating how to use some of the newfangled "CSS Tricks" in very real and practical ways. I've used much of what she's written in here in real projects for real clients. This isn't just some, "look at what CSS can do" kind of book. It offers good advice for how to use the latest features of CSS in a good way.

Such an AMAZING BOOK by one of the "World's Best CSS Authors" in the Web Design modern era, Lea Verou. She has me thinking of things that I never thought were possible with CSS. From some very simple CSS tasks to advanced CSS that not your ordinary designer/dev would even think of doing or trying. The book is filled with great scenarios, fully thought out examples, mind blowing pointers that will leave you asking yourself, "Why didn't I think of this sooner?" This book is not for someone just starting out learning CSS, you should have a solid understanding of the Box model and CSS Layouts. This book has a permanent spot on my desk at work.

El libro superó las expectativas que tenía cuando lo compre, la edición es maravillosa, el acabado del papel es genial y es a todo color, mostrando paso a paso como va cambiando cada cosa que modificamos con el css con imágenes.

Es un libro obligatorio para cualquier amante del UI, ya que trae soluciones a problemas comunes a los que nos enfrentamos en el trabajo diario.

Eu trabalho com CSS há mais de uma década, e em meu trabalho costumam dizer que eu compreendo a fundo a linguagem. Mas penso que muito da minha compreensão se deve a livros essenciais que li já a algum tempo, particularmente os de Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholme e Eric Meyer.

Havia chegado aquele estágio em que pensamos que não tem nada de realmente grandioso a surgir em novas versões do CSS, como o CSS3; mas isso foi até encontrar o blog e o livro de Lea Verou. Além de ter um nome engraçado e ser mais jovem do que eu, Lea não somente explica o que há de novo no CSS (como, por exemplo, que na verdade não existe algo como "CSS3"), mas praticamente inaugura uma nova forma de pensar a linguagem, o que faz toda a diferença.

Ela é a nova "zen master" do CSS. Se você trabalha com essa linguagem, leia este livro o quanto antes, sob o risco de ficar para trás no bonde da história se demorar muito!

These are not really secrets but more 'non-obvious techniques that are not available from the CSS specifications and although you can find them on the web, the quality of the solution varies and usually involves reading through a long and meandering stack overflow or reddit thread until you have the full answer'.

These are often little things that 'make' the design. For example, roll over the Your Lists option, top right on the Amazon menu. There's a little arrow at the top of the resulting menu that points to the option you are over.

Most designers with some experience know how to do that (its an empty div and the arrow is its borders). Not obvious from the spec, and once you have read enough to implement it for the first time, you will be back on the web to see how to create a drop shadow that includes both the menu content div and the arrow (you add the shadow as a filter not a box-shadow). Easy enough, but that web search has just cost you half an hour the first time you have to implement this.

This book contains lots of little titbits like this; adding polish to a design in ways that are not always obvious. The beauty of the book is that you get all these techniques quickly in one place, and its all been through peer review so none of the going back to the web again for 2 hours to fix the dreaded client bug 'it only works in Chrome'.

There are two books that I think every designer and beginner should have and they are CSS Mastery and Pro CSS Layout Techniques (this is based on my owning a lot more CSS books and most of the others are useless; stuffy spec books that spend more time on being right than being practical). I'd put this as the third book you need to quickstart (or renew) a modern CSS knowledge.

Book's Printing is Black & white.....

Una lectura muy visual y amena. Te enseña trucos y habilidades de CSS que vienen genial para el día a día de un desarrollador web. También expone casos de técnicas que podrían hacerse mejor de otra forma más efectiva. En resumen, yo lo he disfrutado bastante, una vez lo acabé lo dejé en el escritorio a modo de libro de consulta.