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Alex Jones

I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).

CSS

CSS3 Pseudo-Classes

Web-Graphics has a great post discussing the use of the :target pseudo-class and the ^ substring matching attribute selector to control the appearance of a block of text that is the target of a named anchor. This method has the ability to provide huge usability benefits for every type of Web site.

I highly recommend Web developers read the article, though you will need an advanced browser to see the examples. Internet Explorer just won’t cut it – yet another reason to use Firefox.

Filed Under: CSS

Dynamic HTML

A great companion to the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook, Dynamic HTML from O’Reilly fills in a lot of the gaps, especially in the areas of the DOM and JavaScript. This book is ideal for developers who are already comfortable with HTML and style sheets. I would not recommend it as the main learning resource for someone new to development, as it serves more as a reference book than a tutorial. But that is fine, we all need dictionaries right? Right.

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook

This is one of the oldest books on my development bookshelf that is still useful. I picked up the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook in 1997 with the intent of learning the new fangled concept of Cascading Style Sheets and DHTML. While the subject was a bit overwhelming at first (there were a lot of differences between the implementation of CSS within Netscape 4 and IE 4), I was able to ramp up on the technology in short order, due in large part to all of the work Mr. Graham put into this book.

As I said at the top of this post, the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook is still useful. While a lot of Web sites provide this information, and many other books (including some in my library) cover the same topic, I find myself returning to this one when I need a quick answer.

The CSS Anthology

Sitepoint consistently provides great information in their many tutorials, blog posts, forums and books. The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks by Rachel Andrew looks to be no different. I gave them my e-mail address to view some sample chapters, and am happy that I did. The format of each chapter, and the problem-solution approach works very well for explaining how to use CSS, and how to get around many of the common mistakes made by developers and designers. Check out the table of contents to see all of the areas that the book covers.

While experienced CSS/XHTML developers may know the majority of the books contents, there are some good tips that may serve them well. Overall, I think this book will prove to be a great introduction to properly implementing Cascading Style Sheets for those who knew to the technology and concepts. This book should make a good companion to Eric Meyer on CSS.

Note: the book is much cheaper on Amazon: The CSS Anthology : 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks

Filed Under: CSS

Uncollapsing Margins

Eric Meyer has published another great resource for the Web development community: Uncollapsing Margins discusses “how margin collapsing can lead to weird behaviors, why these behaviors arise, and ways to work around it when you want a different result. If you’ve ever tried to figure out why a heading’s top margin seems to disappear when it’s the first thing in a div, this article will be of interest.”

Margin collapsing is one of the most confusing aspects of CSS as it isn’t mentioned very often, and until this article, I hadn’t seen a comprehensive explanation of why it happens, and how to “un-collapse” them. Yes, some people posted work in various forums and lists, but Eric has taken the time to tie everything together.

For anyone unfamiliar with Eric, he is the author of many great CSS books, including: