The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

by Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag

Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites. By using the Zen Garden sites as examples of how CSS design techniques and approaches can be applied to specific Web challenges, authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag provide an eye-opening look at the range of design methods made possible by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By the time you've finished perusing the volume, you'll have a new understanding of the graphically rich, fully accessible sites that CSS design facilitates. In sections on design, layout, imagery, typography, effects, and themes, Dave and Molly take you through every phase of the design process--from striking a sensible balance between text and graphics to creating eye-popping special effects (no scripting required).

Genres: Design, Website Design, Nonfiction, Technology, Web, Reference, Computers

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Dave Shea is a Canadian web designer and co-author of The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web.
He is known for his work in web-standard development—from his design community project CSS Zen Garden to his active contributions at the Web Standards Project (WaSP).

Reviews

[Craig Cecil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since I'm a frequent visitor to the excellent CSS Zen Garden web site, I purchased this book hoping that it would enlighten me regarding the technical implementation of some of the more advanced CSS designs. Unfortunately, I think the book just misses the mark. What you get is a brief six page explanation of a particular design concept for each of the 36 included designs. This is all good, but I was hoping to see at least a few of the very advanced designs completely dissected in explanation, from beginning of the source to the end. Intermediate CSS coders will undoubtedly pick up a useful technique or two. Still, it's a good book that could have been great.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I didn't READ this book, per se; I looked at the pretty pictures. And what pretty pictures they were!

This is a good book to either learn from (I assume), or just turn to from time to time to get some web design juices flowing. It inspires you to think of a webpage as a work of art rather than a series of text boxes and padding... or those animated .gif and .midi files that made you want to rip your hair out(although it was "cool" in the 90s, web design has evolved a little from the Geocities days).

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interested read, but not universally usable. The examples make good designs for a graphic designer's blog, but just aren't useful for e-commerce, tutorials, forums, etc. (just picture Good Reads using any one of these layouts). There's even one layout that scrolls horizontally. It (and the site) are great for showing the potential of CSS since all designs use the same HTML code but look radically different, but it's not where to go to learn CSS.

There are some good tips regarding the use of color and space, however the code examples are getting very out of date since the book is 11 years old. It talks about XHTML (which was dropped in favor of HTML 5) and doesn't use CSS3.

Over all, a good coffee table book to give your web designer friends, but that's about it.

[Matt Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for inspiration and information. It is based on Dave Shea's conceptual website css Zen Garden, which effectively showcases the incredible flexibility of Cascading Style Sheets.

The book uses several of the different submission designs in order to address and consider different issues of design.

It is an extremely useful book, but be advised that a basic understanding of CSS is really required in order to fully appreciate the content.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book dives more into design than CSS, and is pretty dated. Web technologies and standards evolves so quickly that this outcome is expected.

The design lessons taught in this book is still relevant. With regards to the technical details in the book, it is a great history lesson, and a reminder of how far we have come so we do not make the same mistakes, be it for the CSS community, or when it comes to having a standard in any other aspects of the web (and beyond).

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked it and recommend it for writers at all levels.

[Joost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing book; I discovered a lot of fascinating points in it. It was easy to follow. I consulted it when I created the website https://raschetkasko.ru

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the website and the sneak previews on Amazon made me want to buy this book, it is sometimes good to have a hard visual reference when learning something new.

Even though it was written in 2003 some aspects of this book our out of date, for example it still references IE6 as not being able to interpret some CSS (of course we are now up to IE9) - it also lists Dreamweaver as a Macromedia product, unfortunately Macromedia has been mostly gobbled up by Adobe who know owns DW.

Although there are some good reference points and ideas, I was a little disappointed that most of the sites the have as examples rely on long vertical scrolling, again maybe a sign of the times. In internet terms 8 years is a millenia.

Still a nice book for my library and I have tabbed numerous pages with stickies for quick reference lookup.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough book for me to finish. The content was not hard, but it had very few code excerpts for reference and was more describing theory than practice. I would recommend this book for designers and developers looking for inspiration, but probably not for someone trying to learn CSS.

You can view my full review on my website.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for illustrating the elegance that can be achieved using CSS for design, and it offers some general principles for basic design and CSS implementation. It is not, however, a technical book or a step-by-step, how-to manual. You won't find any information about CSS syntax or any other detailed technical information. If you already know the basics of CSS and want some conceptual hints for improving layout and design, this is a nice place to start.

[Rowan Evenstar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stunning book with its full page colour prints. I like to look to this book for inspiration now and then.

The website behind the book was a great find, and really showed me the power of css and made me get this book.

A great book to have on the shelf for inspiration. It's not a technical guide and does not cover the basics of CSS, a prior knowledge is required.

My copy remains on my desk in view at all times even after so many years.

[Tatiana Jimenez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more for a somewhat experienced CSS savvy web designer... which is not me. I'm a beginner. But I still definitely learned a lot from this book. A lot of design tips. This was a good book for me to take in and read to acquaint myself with the world of CSS and what it is capable of helping me accomplish.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me turn a professional corner in my design career in not only what it taught me, but how -- through it's preaching of simplicity, accessibility, and beauty. If you are web designer/developer, it will do the same for you. If you aren't, there's no more to look at here.

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for beginners! Though this would make a great step for intermediate CSS users. Lots of clever hacks and work-arounds all taught with visuals that really speak to the more visually inclined, like designers. Definitely one I'd like to keep on a programming reference shelf.

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it presents some interesting concepts for CSS designs, it is also nearly 15 years old, so it is a little out of date. There are no references to CSS3 and HTML5. Several of the chapters don't go into detail about the coding of CSS either.

[Ari Suradipraja · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good crossover book - a little bit of CSS for designers and a little bit of design for nerds trying to understand the concepts. No great revelations to be had, but it is pretty.

[Theresia Tre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some CSS sites case study from the CSS dump site: CSS Zen Garden.

[Matt McClard · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to learn to design web sites with css this book is a must have.

[Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of pretty pictures and duh code. Nothing specific or necessary to really get the zen coding of the book.

[Adele Groote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational to those striving to be CSS masters. ALso good for design ideas.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful.

[Kate Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dave Shea is awesome, and he proves his point that CSS is the best thing ever, in an amazing fashion.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great so far.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly the how-to on CSS layout I was looking for, but still worth a skim if you are looking for inspiration for new layouts.

[Kim]

Ongoing working while reading read... so far some useful ideas about change in perspective

[Alessandro Puzielli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good walking in the web design world

[Christopher Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for design insight and CSS tricks

[Sonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It didn't have as much instruction as descriptions of why someone did what they did to their website.

[Oscar Sánchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of complex advanced examples of css web sites. Very helpful.