First, this work is intended for a very niche audience. It is for computer programmers who are web designers and who want to learn not just basic CSS (how webpages are currently styled) but advanced CSS. As becomes the O’Reilly book series, Verou is fortunately a master of CSS and of technical communication. Her wit makes learning how to make the most out of CSS entertaining, intriguing, and extensible to new situations.

Verou, a member of the W3C CSS Working Group, provides 47 “secrets” that provide example code and results on topics ranging from color tinting and custom checkboxes to the frosted-glass effect and custom animations. More than just a simple “cookbook,” the book is filled with graphics as she helps the reader think through the solution.

My personal favorite effect is #42 – Elastic Transitions. Apparently, the rate of timing for an animation is not linear by default. In fact, it can be specified by a Bezier curve. So CSS allows you to define the anchor points for a Bezier curve, and the animation will proceed according to the timing specified therein.

While I don’t believe that one can ever say someone can completely “master” any art-form, Verou clearly displays a high degree of mastery of CSS. She provides copious links for further exploration. It’s well worth the time for those who want to make their webpages shine with nuance and grace. ( )

This book by the veteran web developer Lea Verou is intended for a somewhat more advanced audience and addresses problems which can not be solved using ‘typical’ CSS. A lot of these problems are however very real and are faced by web developers on a daily basis. This book is therefore an extremely valuable reference for dealing with the more complex side of CSS, whilst relying as little as possible on CSS pre-processors or scripting. The book is conveniently split up into chapters, with each one devoted to a different set of problems such as Shapes, Typography and Structure & Layout.

Each section begins with a particular problem such as a desired visual effect. Lea then formulates an approach to solving this problem while clearly stating her reasoning behind it - I found this to be particularly educational as it has encouraged me to think more creatively while writing CSS. The initial idea is then refactored into a finished solution which addresses the defined problem while being kept as minimal as possible. In doing so Lea strives to keep the code DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). This is commendable, although I feel like in certain cases it perhaps goes too far and potentially harms the readability of code. At other points the solutions rely on techniques which are not yet well supported, even in modern browsers, although to Lea’a credit she always warns if browser support is low, and provides fallbacks if these exist.

At times Lea offers a peek into the future by referring to CSS specification currently in development - it is encouraging to see that as time goes by we as developers will be able to implement a lot of these solutions natively without having to constantly think outside of the box and ‘hacking’ CSS (although certainly as designs grow more complex and intricate, a new set of problems will emerge which will in turn require new imaginative workarounds).

The intention of this book is to offer concise solutions to concrete problems whilst encouraging a creative approach to front end development and for me personally it succeeds on both of these fronts. ( )