After my “Responsive Web Design” by Ethan Marcotte and “Designing for Emotion” by Aaron Walter reviews, it’s time to talk about the Dan Cederholm book “CSS3 for Web Designers“, a “A Book Apart” publication.

Who is Dan Cederholm, the author?

Before reading this book it’s good to know who is Dan Cederholm, the author. I guess that many of you already heard of a great website called “Dribble“. If not, i suggest you to find another job far from web design! Well, Dan is simply the co-founder and the designer of Dribble.  Now that you know who is the “CSS3 for Web Designers” author, you should understand why he is the right person to teach you how to use CSS3 in web design.

Using CSS3 in production mode

The actual version of CSS is 2.1, but using CSS3 is possible because many browsers already understand it. Even if we have to use prefix such as -o-, -moz-, or -webkit-, some selectors are fully integrated and can be used in production. I’ve used CSS3 in many projects, without any problems, and reading this book help understand how to deal with main browsers interpretation. At the same, i realized that i wasn’t really using CSS transitions, why ? I can’t say, but i’ve tried a few things, and found transitions really simple to set up and fun to implement. You can have a look on the transitions i added to the Ashley theme on the gallery page template. So, yes we can use CSS3 for our clients web sites.

A small book for a big subject

The book, is pretty small, only 120 pages, that’s why everything about CSS3 hasn’t been covered, but it’s not a problem because the main points are treated in depth. Dan is giving us in this book, a nice overview of CSS3 and how we can use it today if we are ready to accept that the display can vary on some devices. I am sure you have already experienced a bad situation explaining to one of your clients why a website isn’t exactly the same on Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer (by the way, you can propose them do have a look to this web site: http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com). Well, the author gives us ways to make a client understand why this sometimes can’t be done, and how to explain why.

Transitions, Forms, Multiple Backgrounds…

Using case studies and working examples, Dan is demonstrating us the power of CSS3 for modern browsers. You’ll find in the book how to create great transitions (and, it’s more important, how to understand how they really work!), you’ll learn how to create multiple backgrounds, and how to customize your forms. To be honest, you’ll learn great things that you will be able to use quickly in your already existing projects.

Final Thoughts: 4 stars

I cannot set 5 stars this time because i would have liked to have more informations in this book about sustainable CSS code, but i guess it wasn’t the book’s aim. If you read this book, make sure to combine it with “Responsive Web Design”, and “HTML5 for web designers”.