In my opinion the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a fundamental and integral part of web design today as it allows you to separate formatting from content. And these days with sophisticated browsers it allows page layouts that are not possible with simple HTML.

What I like about this book, by Keith Schengili-Roberts, is that it delves deeper into CSS than demonstrating mere tips and tricks. Each individual CSS property is looked at and explanations are given on what CSS is capable of. There is also a look into the future of CSS. Another strength of this book is that it explains both the CSS1 and CSS2 standards, even though they are still under development.

Topics covered: Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the CSS1 and CSS2 standards, the browser wars, CSS support on the Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera and Mozilla browsers; basic CSS (grouping, inheritance, and contextual selectors), cascading order, CSS units, pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements, font properties, color and background properties, text and box properties, classification properties, new CSS2 features, Unicode support, generated content and automatic numbering for lists, properties for printing Web pages, new table properties, aural style sheets for speech-enabled browsers, CSS1 and CSS2 reference and cross-browser comparison of supported properties.

Another plus for me is that the book provides cross platform examples. It is frustrating that even the most up-to-date browsers do not fully support the complete CSS1 and CSS2 standards at the moment. So it was refreshing to find each element listed, and a handy chart showing the level of support in the most widely used browsers.

I haven't found a more in-depth or better volume on CSS as yet and I warmly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about designing websites incorporating CSS.

About the Author: KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS is Webmaster for the Toronto, CA software firm KL Group, and a long-time writer for The Computer Paper, Canada's largest computer magazine.