Book Review: CSS Pocket Reference

A couple weeks ago I decided I needed a good CSS book. I walked into Barnes & Noble fully expecting to pay at least $40-50. I sat down in the Web Design section and started looking through all the thick books. What I was interested in finding was a book that could teach me something I did not already know about CSS. But all those thick books seemed to be more for beginner - intermediate users. They all had plenty of examples and pictures, but none of them had just what I was wanted.

Then I picked up the CSS Pocket Reference by Eric Meyer. This tiny book had exactly what I was looking for: a straight-forward list of all the CSS properties and their available values. For each property it lists things such as the initial value, what elements it applies to, a description, an example, and browser support. Not only is it a great quick reference, I was also able to learn a few things just from reading through the beginning of each entry.

My main complaint of this book is the language used in the descriptions. Some of them are actually too descriptive and wordy. For example, here is one of the rules of a floating element:

"A left (or right) floating element that has another floating element to its left (right) may not have its right outer edge to the right (left) of its containing block's right (left) edge."

This could have just been: "Multiple floating elements will wrap instead of pushing outside of their parent container." But if you don't want to read through all the wordiness, you can just play with the CSS and see what happens.

Final Rating: A-, definitely worth the $10