• Table of Contents
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
By
Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag Publisher: Peachpit PressPub Date: February 17, 2005ISBN: 0-321-30347-4Pages: 304
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Dave Shea Thanks:
Molly E. Holzschlag Thanks:
From Both Dave and Molly
Special Thanks
About the Authors
Dave Shea
Molly E. Holzschlag
Introduction
What Is This Book About?
Who Should Buy This Book?
Conventions Used
How Should I Use This Book?
Chapter 1.
View Source
Genesis
The Beginning of a Change
Why these Standards?
Planting the Seed
Default DesignTranquille
Implications
Laying the Foundation
Semantic Markup
Building Great Markup
The Test of Time
Zen Garden Source HTML
Visual Structure
Designing For Flexibility
Lessons Taught
Benefits of Web Standards
Lessons Learned
Accessibility Checking
Text Scalability
XHTML and Mime Types
Foreign Languages
Copyright and Theft
Build it Bigger, Build it Better!
Chapter 2.
Design
Atlantis: Minimal design, unity, and symbolism
Zunflower: Playing with light and shadow, shape and space
Springtime: Using color to evoke emotion
Viridity: Balancing pattern, texture, and contrast
Ballade: Using the imagination to create visual flow and guide the eye
Night Drive: Converting static site mock-ups to code, and solving problems when doing so
Chapter 3.
Layout
Backyard: Understanding absolute positioning and floats
Entomology: Centered layouts in contemporary Web design
White Lily: Principles and process for designing effective layouts
Prêt-à-porter: Exploring horizontal lines in a vertical world
CS(S) Monk: Meaningful positioning and understanding the grid
Not So Minimal: Dealing with common overflow problems
Chapter 4.
Imagery
Japanese Garden: Understanding image formats and optimization
Revolution!: Applying images with CSS
Deco: Minimal imagery, maximum impact
No Frontiers!: Breaking out of the box using rounded imagery
Coastal Breeze: Creating imagery for your work and finding additional source material
What Lies Beneath: Three-dimensional environments in two-dimensional form
Chapter 5.
Typography
Oceans Apart: Simplicity in type leads to lasting, effective design
Si6: The trouble with fonts, and how to cope with that trouble
Release One: Coming to terms with the insanity that is font sizing
Dead or Alive: Grace and gravity in typographic design
Blood Lust: Exploring type formatting options
Golden Mean: Method and creativity combined to create typographic balance
Chapter 6.
Special Effects
This is Cereal: The cascade and layering effects
Gemination: Two designs but one style sheet
Bonsai Sky: Working around browser limitations with creative imagery and code
Tulipe: CSS drop-down menus with an alternative for Internet Explorer
Door to my Garden: Simple CSS resulting in impressive, sophisticated visual effects
Elastic Lawn: Visual problem solving sometimes goes further than skin-deep
Chapter 7.
Reconstruction
Hedges: Background images blend seamlessly with a variable foreground
Radio Zen: A radio dial made possible with a fixed background image
South of the Border: Corralling content with margins and positioning
Corporate ZenWorks: From competition to concord
Open Window: One design, three layouts
Mnemonic: Designer tricks for liquid layouts and enhanced effects
Closing Thoughts
CSS Crib Sheet
Understand the Problem
Other Resources
CSS Design Web Sites
Publications
Books
Submit Your Own!