Pixelbox

Dear Santa, I recently came across a post on Andy's website suggesting I should write you a letter to ask for a copy of the book, CSS Mastery for Christmas. Not knowing much about the book I decided to do a little research and discover if I really did want it... The book is entitled CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions, from which I assume it takes developers through the best practices in order to developer websites that are valid, accessiable and up to the W3C's standards. I personally wrote my dissertation on the subject of developing with web standards and interviewed Andy during the process, so would be fascinated to see how he tackles the subject. I am currently doing a lot of front end work on a very large website due to launch in the new year. I believe I have tackled it in the best way, and used many techniques I learnt through Zeldman, Cederholm, Clark and Keith books. So have another frame of reference would be fantastic. The book starts by setting the foundations for front-end web development. This is something thats importance I can't stress enough. Even now I am still getting to grips with how the flow works and the more I understand the less I feel the distant urge to sod it and hack away with tables and spacer gifs. So when I saw the second chapter was about the visual formatting model I was even more excited. From having previously meet Andy I'm sure the book will also cover the trinity of web standards, something I am deeply passionate about. Latter sections of CSS Mastery cover hacks and bug fixes, which I assume will help developers support browsers that are not as CSS compliant, such as Internet Explorer. This again is something that I often see tipping developers over the edge and resorting to hacky and browser spercific methods. I also spotted that the book also has two case studies, More Than Doodles and Tuscany Luxury Resorts. The first thing you notice is that both of these sites look fantastic, and have lots of modern web design styles and techniques that I would love to learn more about. They also look like full sites, rather than those small, rushed and often rather ugly sites you get with most other CSS books. Andy was helped with the book by Cameron Moll and Simon Collison, both some what web development celebrities, whose names I'm sure you have heard before and can only add quality to the book. The book is also publised by Friends of ED, who have also published one of my faviourite development books by Jeremy Keith on DOM Scripting. A great looking sample chapter of the book can be downloaded from the webiste CSS Mastery: Chapter 7 Layout. You can also get the examples used in the book and view the example sites. So in conclusion it looks like a great book, so if your still doing your shopping santa, I hope I can give you a hint. (You can even get CSS Mastery from amazon so you dont have to leave the house ;) ) Thanks, Rob