utahcon said
Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS
Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS
Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS teaches you exactly what the title would suggest. Zoe Mickley Gillenwater walks you through the theory and logic behind designing with CSS to create fluid design choices.
The book is very heavy in theory, so much so that the 9 chapter book has 3 chapters of pure theory before ever getting to the meat of how CSS can help you create the designs and layouts that Zoe suggests are best for each situation. Finally in chapter 4 you will get a brief exposure to the life of CSS in the design process, but it is short lived.
Don't get me wrong, theory is a very important part to design work, and development in general. You must first know where you are going and why you are going there, or you will certainly end up in a place that you never intended. However, I felt that this book was a little heavy on the theory. More examples would have been nice as well.
A little about Zoe. Zoe is the design services manager at the University of North Caronlina Highway Safety Research Center, and leads the design and development of dozens of information-rich web sites. She focuses on aesthetics, usability, and best practices.
Overall the book is a short read, and in the end you will surely understand why you will pick between fixed, fluid and elastic designs, and if you are careful you will even know how to program those styles with CSS.
You can pick up Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS at Amazon.com or at the publisher's website newriders.com
jwgray7 said
I've been struggling with css and getting it to behave. I went to the bookstore and must have poured through about 15 or so css related books. I was looking for a step by step guide through the process and instantly grabed this book up as the one to beat. I walked away with 3 books to the register. This book was first on my list to read. Flexible Web Design has helped me get over the learning curve answered a lot of my biggest questions and cured most of my css hangups the first evening I cracked the book. You explain it very well like a friend sitting down with you. You don't take anything for granted, your very meticulous yet the explanations flows easy and comfortably at the same time, How did you do that? I highly recommend this to designers going from table layouts to css and need a comprehensive crash coarse that will get you up and going quickly with lots of tips, strategies and design considerations.
Thank you so much for getting this out there.
said
I just purchased the book, and find it to be a valuable resource for the baffling topic of liquid layouts. It "set me straight" on some basic concepts and I particularly liked the way Zoe explained the pros and cons of the various layout choices. For this reason, I will refer to it before beginning a new project to help me me make some design decisions. Also, she provides some examples for dealing with some of the issues that must be considered when working with liquid layouts(such as strategies to use for graphic comps). I also think it's a good blend of theory and actual exercises ... I have found that some books have too much of one or the other. For anyone ready to move beyond the fixed-width layout, I highly recommend it. I was very happy to see a very comprehensive book that dealt specifically with liquid layouts, written by someone who is an expert in this particular area. However it's not for the fledgling web designer (and the author clearly states this in her introduction).
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