Product Overview

Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong!

- Here’s a look at the table of contents:

Preface
- Who Should Read This Book?
- What’s in This Book?
- The Book’s Web Site
  - The Code Archive
  - Updates and Errata
- The SitePoint Forums
- The SitePoint Newsletters
- Your Feedback
- Conventions Used in This Book
  - Code Samples
  - Tips, Notes, and Warnings
- Acknowledgments
1. The Problem with CSS
- The Grid’s the Thing
- Tables Do the Trick
- CSS and the Browser Wars
  - Early Browser Support for CSS
  - The Version 4 Browsers
  - Internet Explorer 6 and the Long Sleep
- Internet Explorer 8 Changes the Game
- Our Part of the Bargain
CSS Table Layout
- Using Current Layout Techniques
  - Absolute Positioning
  - Floated Layout
- Using CSS Tables
  - How Does This Work?
  - Anonymous Table Elements
  - Other Useful Table Properties
- Making a Perfect Grid
- Putting Principles into Practice
CSS Table Solutions
- Can CSS tables be used to create flexible layouts?
- Can CSS tables be nested?
- How can I position elements within a table cell?
- Do CSS tables support the colspan and rowspan attributes?
- What’s going wrong with these anonymous table elements?
- Do I have to change the source order?
- Is the source order really a problem?
- What about older browsers?
Considering Older Browsers
- Support for CSS Tables
  - To Hell with Bad Browsers
  - History Repeats
- Option 1: Ignore Older Browsers
- Option 2: Provide a Simplified Layout
  - Adding a Style Sheet for IE6 and 7
- Option 3: Reproduce Your Layout with Older Techniques
- But Why Not Stick with Floated Layouts?
  - Now It’s Our Turn
  - Premium Design Elements
  - Greater Ease of Development
- Moving Forward
The Road Ahead
- CSS3 Multi-column Layout Module
  - Multiple Equal-width Columns
  - Other Multi-column Layout Properties
- CSS3 Grid Positioning Module
  - The grid-columns and grid-rows Properties
  - Creating a Grid with Columns and Column-gap Properties
  - Positioning Elements on the Grid: the gr Value
- CSS3 Template Layout Module
  - Setting up the Template
  - Positioning Elements into the Slots
- Everything You Know about CSS Is Wrong
Index

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By Rachel Andrew & Kevin Yank

Product Information

Features

Published: October 2008

7"x9" format
Entire contents of book in full color throughout!
Covers all modern browsers
Explains cutting-edge but usable CSS3 techniques

Expert Reviews

Making me think differently about CSS tables is Rachel's aim in Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong! As we'll see, she does a damn fine job.

Andy Clarke forabeautifulweb.com

The sooner that IE8 can be adopted, the better, and these techniques can start to get a proper working out. Who knows, there may be a whole new raft of tricks that will arise as a result of these CSS table layout properties...

Ian Lloyd accessify.com

Customer Reviews

Live, unmoderated reviews from our customers, typos and all.

"Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong" is a very misleading title. The main content of the book deals with CSS-based tables, which is not fully implemented except in a few modern browsers (and will only work under certain conditions). We have to deal with older browsers (like IE6) for a while longer, so there is no need to even try to implement CSS-based tables (professionally) at this point.

Had the title been something like "Use CSS-based Tables in Your Design" I would have bought the book for research and knowledge. I know a lot about CSS and nothing changed by reading this book. My problem is not with the authors; I have great respect for both Rachel and Kevin, but this one is a bit under par.

Over the years I have bought a lot of books from Sitepoint; this one is the first book I regret buying.

Kim Vigsbo, USA

"Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong" assumes you think CSS is "too difficult" to learn and suggests that you use the display: table property as an easy solution (mimicking table TR's and TD's). Although this is a great option, it is only supported in IE8 (Firefox and Opera support it, Safari in strict-mode only). Most of us have clients still using IE6, so this isn't a viable solution. Plus, CSS isn't difficult to learn at all - it's actually quite easy. I was surprised the authors made this assumption, and also for the price, the book is rather slim. If you're really serious about web standards and design, learn CSS, it's really not that hard. Then, play around with the display: table property as an option for more recent browsers.

Ellen, USA

I have been reading your book Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML &CSS, 2nd Edition by Ian Lloyd. It was required reading and used as a reference for a college course I am taking. It is a awesome, well written book explaining HYML and CSS in a very understandable way. I am taking this course in college so I can maintain my own website http://www.longviewbiz.com on my own with out the help of a webmaster. I will be ordering more books in the near future to supplement this one. Thanks Jim Hay owner Longviewbiz.com

Jim Hay, USA

My web designing life will never be the same again! This book was so easy to follow, i'd created my first css tables layout in not more than an hour, and catered for that "other" browser in 5 mins flat!

Thanks guys, for making my 10th Sitepoint book such a good one!

Richard Plyer, USA

Rachel and Kevin hit it out of the park with this one! I've shied away from using CSS Tables in websites for everything shoddy documentation to sketchy browser support.

But with this book Rachel and Kevin have taken away every reason not to try using CSS Tables in your next layout.

Jeffrey G. Allen, USA

This book would be awesome if Microsoft would disappear altogether with all their previous version of IE when they release a new one... But what good does it make having a cutting edge browser that allows anything if you still have to worry about IE6 and 7? If they were talking about Firefox that actually updates their products without leaving the user with old stuff sitting in their machines I would think their book is fantastic. But since I live in the real world, I still find myself coding css for IE6 and IE7 and now I will have another annoying IE release to worry about...
So I don't think this book is ahead of its time, I think this book is utterly utopian and unrealistic. Unless, of course, Microsoft decides to change the way they work, which would be awesome....

MontyCora, Brazil

I was a bit surprised when the book turned up at how thin it was. The content has due weight, and is a book paving the way, a little ahead of time. Clearly the methods suggested in the book work, indeed work elegantly; and the death of anything less that ie8 can't come soon enough for my money.

You need to buy this book early to stay ahead of the game. If you do html and css you will probably change some of the things you are doing now.