<commit_before>---
layout: post
title:  "Book Review: CSS3 for Web Designers"
date:   2016-06-13 20:14:33 -0400
categories: code
---

<img src="../img/css3-book.jpg" alt="CSS3 for Web Designers book on wooden table">

<a href="https://abookapart.com/products/css3-for-web-designers">CSS3 for Web Designers</a> was one of the first books I read when I started making websites at work about six years ago. Like its companion book <a href="https://abookapart.com/products/html5-for-web-designers">HTML5 for Web Designers</a> by <NAME>, I was grateful to have a short, accessible primer on what were then emerging and messy web technologies. Essentially, the book says <em>here’s what you can use now</em>, and <em>here are some of the things on the horizon</em>. Nice.

Now six years later, both books have been revised to bring the content up to date. While I did not perform a side-by-side comparison (having passed along my first editions), I do not regret upgrading my copies one bit. I like the <a href="http://www.abookapart.com">A Book Apart</a> series because the titles serve equally well as introductions and refresher courses. Therefore, I count on them to be fairly evergreen (<cite>Design is a Job</cite>) or updated before they start to feel too stale. Unlike a reference manual, the ABA series titles can each be read in an hour or two, and so every page counts.

## But, I’m not a web designer

Especially given Cederholm’s contributions to the community (particularly Dribbble), I understand why this book is marketed to web designers who need to know what’s possible now and what’s likely to be possible in the future. But I think the scope of this book is perfect for developers who are just staring out (say, someone in a coding bootcamp or internship). Likewise, I think this is a great pick for college and grad school courses that have an intro to web design component. It doesn’t spend a lot of time defining what CSS is, but I think Cederholm is fair in his treatment of where CSS3 is today -- yeah, you’ll still need to include vendor prefixes, but things are getting better -- and there’s fun stuff you can be using right now.

## General Philosophy and Approach

This book rightly presents CSS3 as a presentation layer, and Cederholm opens the book by noting how we can use CSS3 to enhance websites without damaging the user experience for people running older browsers:

<blockquote>
When we decide to focus on and target these non-critical areas of the visual experience, it becomes incredibly freeing to layer on CSS3 and enrich the interaction of a website without worrying that the core message, layout, and accessibility will be hindered.
</blockquote><commit_msg>fixed timestamp<commit_after>---
layout: post
title:  "Book Review: CSS3 for Web Designers"
date:   2016-06-13 17:14:33 -0400
categories: code
---

<img src="../img/css3-book.jpg" alt="CSS3 for Web Designers book on wooden table">

<a href="https://abookapart.com/products/css3-for-web-designers">CSS3 for Web Designers</a> was one of the first books I read when I started making websites at work about six years ago. Like its companion book <a href="https://abookapart.com/products/html5-for-web-designers">HTML5 for Web Designers</a> by <NAME>, I was grateful to have a short, accessible primer on what were then emerging and messy web technologies. Essentially, the book says <em>here’s what you can use now</em>, and <em>here are some of the things on the horizon</em>. Nice.

Now six years later, both books have been revised to bring the content up to date. While I did not perform a side-by-side comparison (having passed along my first editions), I do not regret upgrading my copies one bit. I like the <a href="http://www.abookapart.com">A Book Apart</a> series because the titles serve equally well as introductions and refresher courses. Therefore, I count on them to be fairly evergreen (<cite>Design is a Job</cite>) or updated before they start to feel too stale. Unlike a reference manual, the ABA series titles can each be read in an hour or two, and so every page counts.

## But, I’m not a web designer

Especially given Cederholm’s contributions to the community (particularly Dribbble), I understand why this book is marketed to web designers who need to know what’s possible now and what’s likely to be possible in the future. But I think the scope of this book is perfect for developers who are just staring out (say, someone in a coding bootcamp or internship). Likewise, I think this is a great pick for college and grad school courses that have an intro to web design component. It doesn’t spend a lot of time defining what CSS is, but I think Cederholm is fair in his treatment of where CSS3 is today -- yeah, you’ll still need to include vendor prefixes, but things are getting better -- and there’s fun stuff you can be using right now.

## General Philosophy and Approach

This book rightly presents CSS3 as a presentation layer, and Cederholm opens the book by noting how we can use CSS3 to enhance websites without damaging the user experience for people running older browsers:

<blockquote>
When we decide to focus on and target these non-critical areas of the visual experience, it becomes incredibly freeing to layer on CSS3 and enrich the interaction of a website without worrying that the core message, layout, and accessibility will be hindered.
</blockquote>
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