CSS books

Developing applications for Android and other mobile devices using web technologies is now well within reach. When the capabilities of HTML5 are combined with CSS3 and JavaScript, web application developers have an opportunity to develop compelling mobile applications using familiar tools. Not only is it possible to build mobile web apps that feel as good as native apps, but to also write an application once and have it run a variety of different devices.
While the HTML5 specification is still evolving, there is a lot that can be used right now to build mobile web apps. Mobile web apps are now starting to provide many of the features that were once only available to native-language-based apps in Java, Objective-C, etc. Pro Android Web Apps teaches developers already familiar with web application development, how to code and structure a web app for use on the Android mobile platform.

• Understand both the why and how of mobile web app development, focusing on the Android platform.
• Learn how to structure mobile web apps through a number of practical, real-world application examples.
• Discover what cloud platforms such as Google AppEngine have to offer Android web apps, for both hosting web apps and providing device to cloud data synchronization solutions.
• Get a real picture of the status of HTML5 on Android and other mobile devices, including some things to watch out for when building your own applications.
• Understand the capabilities of the web application stack, and how to complement those with native bridging frameworks such as PhoneGap to access native features of the device.
• Gain an understanding of the different UI frameworks that are available for building mobile web apps.
• Learn how to include mapping and leverage location-based services in mobile web apps to create engaging mobile experiences.
• Enable social integration with your Android web app and gain access to millions of potential users.

After reading this book, you will not only have a greater understanding of the world of web apps on Android, but also how to leverage additional tools and frameworks to increase the reach of your mobile web apps. Additionally, through the practical samples in the book you will have been given solid exposure of where both the opportunities and challenges lie when building mobile apps the web way.

What you’ll learn

• What Android web apps can do, and when to use web development rather than native development to create an application.
• How to use existing JavaScript and CSS frameworks to create rich mobile user interfaces.
• When to use HTML5 and when to use a native bridging framework to access native Android functionality.
• Connext with cloud services and APIs to build engaging location based services and games.
• Enable social integration with your Android web app and gain access to millions of potential users.

Who this book is for

This book is targeted at web developers looking to transfer their skills over to mobile application development. Readers will understand that Android is continuing to gain momentum in the marketplace and will want to build an application specifically for that platform. They will have a strong desire to use web technologies rather than the native tools to build applications, either due to personal taste or to gain cross-platform mobile portability for the majority of their application code.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started
2. Building a Mobile HTML Entry Form
3. HTML5 Storage APIs
4. Constructing a Multipage App
5. Synchronizing with the Cloud
6. Competing with Native Apps
7. Exploring Interactivity
8. Location Based Services and Mobile Mapping
9. Native Bridging with PhoneGap
10. Integrating with Social APIs
11. Mobile UI Frameworks Compared
12. Polishing and Packaging an App for Release
13. The Future of Mobile Computing
14. Appendix: Debugging Android Web Apps

Web site design has grown up. Unlike the old days, when designers cobbled together chunky HTML, bandwidth-hogging graphics, and a prayer to make their sites look good, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) now lets your inner designer come out and play. But CSS isn't just a tool to pretty up your site; it's a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentation--from fonts and colors to page layout. "CSS: The Missing Manual" clearly explains this powerful design language and how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.

Like their counterparts in print page-layout programs, style sheets allow designers to apply typographic styles, graphic enhancements, and precise layout instructions to elements on a Web page. Unfortunately, due to CSS's complexity and the many challenges of building pages that work in all Web browsers, most Web authors treat CSS as a kind of window-dressing to spruce up the appearance of their sites. Integrating CSS with a site's underlying HTML is hard work, and often frustratingly complicated. As a result many of the most powerful features of CSS are left untapped. With this book, beginners and Web-building veterans alike can learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of CSS and take complete control over their Web pages' appearance.

Author David McFarland (the bestselling author of O'Reilly's Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual) combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You'll learn how to:

• Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
  
• Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
  
• Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages
  
• Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows
  
• Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML
• Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your Web pages work consistently from browser to browser
  
• Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don't require using old techniques like HTML tables Style Web pages for printing

Unlike competing books, this Missing Manual doesn't assume that everyone in the world only surfs the Web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer; our book provides support for all major Web browsers and is one of the first books to thoroughly document the newly expanded CSS support in IE7, currently in beta release.

Want to learn how to turn humdrum Web sites into destinations that will capture viewers and keep them longer? Pick up CSS: The Missing Manual and learn the real magic of this tool.

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition is for web developers looking to create websites using Cascading Style Sheets for layout, which allow for faster page downloads, easier maintenance, faster website redesigns, and better search engine optimization.

HTML Utopia covers all aspects of using Cascading Style Sheets in Web Development, and is a must-read for Web Developers designing new sites or upgrading existing ones to use CSS layouts.

This book includes one of the most comprehensive CSS2 references on the market. Jeffrey Zeldman, web design guru and co-founder of the Web Standards Project, says "After reading this book, you will not only understand how to use CSS to emulate old-school, table-driven web layouts, you will be creating websites that would be impossible to design using traditional methods".

The second edition of this popular book includes brand new coverage of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 1.1, new CSS Solutions, and greatly expanded coverage of popular, cross-browser, CSS layout techniques.

From The Back Cover
"Now You Too Can Easily Create Modern 'Table-free' Websites Using CSS from scratch"

Rachel Andrew and Dan Shafer's book is a comprehensive guide to learning and applying the principles of CSS to your Website.

This book will teach you how to

• Write faster loading, dramatically smaller pages
• Speed up site maintenance by separating the content from the layout
• Create flexible 3-column designs with ease
• Write device-independent CSS that will work on everything from a PC to an internet refridgerator
• Write search engine friendly pages that can actually be understood by search engines
• Design sites that are standards compliant
• Accomodate older Web Browsers
• And much more...

Web Designer's Reference provides an intriguing, comprehensive reference for Web design, using XHTML, CSS, and presentation-oriented JavaScript. This book is divided primarily in two sections: the Tutorial section, which includes Modular discussion and tutorial-based chapters; and the Reference section, which features essential reference guides to XHTML and CSS.

This book focuses on best-practice design, XHTML and CSS. The text is peppered with JavaScript discussion, but the book remains presentation-oriented to increase worth and illustrate the big picture. Emphasis will be placed upon current Web standards, which means using XHTML throughout. This unique book integrates technologies and follows through, teaching you how to design sites from the ground up. With plenty of practical examples, you may explore creative avenues with material you have learned. And the open-ended nature of the exercise enables you to integrate them into your own work, to save you time and money in the long run!

As the industry standard method for enriching the presentation of HTML-based web pages, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow you to give web pages more structure and a more sophisticated look. But first, you have to get past CSS theory and resolve real-world problems.

For those all-too-common dilemmas that crop up with each project, CSS Cookbook provides hundreds of practical examples with CSS code recipes that you can use immediately to format your web pages. Arranged in a quick-lookup format for easy reference, the second edition has been updated to explain the unique behavior of the latest browsers: Microsoft's IE 7 and Mozilla's Firefox 1.5. Also, the book has been expanded to cover the interaction of CSS and images and now includes more recipes for beginning CSS users. The explanation that accompanies each recipe enables you to customize the formatting for your specific needs. With topics that range from basic web typography and page layout to techniques for formatting lists, forms, and tables, this book is a must-have companion, regardless of your experience with Cascading Style Sheets.

CSS-based design doesn't need to be boring. The Art & Science of CSS brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS.

This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.

• Create truly attention-grabbing headings.
• Discover multiple ways to present images effectively.
• Use background images to give your site zest.
• Build usable and attractive navigation.
• Design forms that are stylish and functional.
• Learn how to break away from the square box gclich.
• Create funky tables.
• And lots more

From the Publisher

Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson, five of the biggest names in CSS design have joined forces to bring you The Art & Science Of CSS.
Beautifully presented in full color, this book will teach you how to apply innovative CSS-based techniques to create visually stunning headings, forms, menus, navigation, backgrounds, and much more...
Using The Art & Science Of CSS, you'll see just how easy it is to unleash your creative talents and design inspirational web sites with CSS.
All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The CSS code used to create each of the components is included and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.

Among its many treasures, this book will show you how to:

• Format calendars, menus and table of contents using CSS
• Create horizontal, vertical and tab-based navigation systems using CSS
• Create rounded corners using CSS
• Design stylish Website headings
• Put together funky & artistic Website backgrounds
• Use CSS to render blockquotes, dates and lists in a visually appealing manner

All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The code CSS code used to create each of the components is provided and is guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.
Who Should Read This Book?

This book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain the practical skills involved in using CSS to make attractive web sites, especially if you're not the type who likes to learn by memorizing a formal specification and then trying to work out which browsers implemented it completely (does anyone enjoy reading specifications?). The only knowledge you'll need to have is some familiarity with HTML. This book will give designers the skills they need to implement their ideas, and provides developers with creative inspiration through practical examples.

In Detail

Drupal is an award winning open source Content Management System (CMS). Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is one of the most popular choices for creating a CMS website.

Drupal employs a specialized templating system and supports themes, which allow you to change the look and feel of the system's front and back-end interfaces.

Drupal 6 Themes is an ideal introduction to theming with Drupal 6. If you want to create a striking new look for your Drupal 6 website, this book is for you. This book is a revised, updated and expanded edition of Drupal 5 Themes, written specifically for Drupal 6. The book will show you techniques and tools to help you improve the look and feel of any Drupal 6-powered website.

Starting from the basics of theme setup and configuration, you will learn about the Drupal theming architecture and the PHPTemplate engine, and then move on to modifying existing themes and building new themes from scratch. You will find out about tools to make your theme development easier, and also find invaluable information about under-documented elements of the theming system.

What you will learn from this book?

• Learn about the Drupal 6 Theming Architecture
• Find and install new themes
• Get the most from Drupal's theme configuration system
• Create a new theme from scratch
• Master PHPTemplate
• Modify the default templates and styles
• Override the default templates with your own
• Create dynamic styling which responds to the content or the user
• Discover tools that make theming easier and more efficient

Approach

This book helps you understand the logic behind the theming system employed in Drupal, and how to make it work for you. You will learn key concepts and work through examples with careful, step-by-step instructions.

Who this book is written for?

The main requirements to make use of this book are knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a touch of creativity - you don't need to know anything about theming in Drupal, although you should be familiar with the basic operation of the Drupal system.

Although this book aims to make Drupal theming accessible to designers, theming in Drupal 6 involves writing some PHP code, and a basic knowledge of PHP will be helpful.

Regardless of your technical skills, this book will teach you to design themes for your Drupal websites in the easiest way.

There are several other books on the market that serve as in-depth technical guides or reference books for CSS. None, however, take a more hands-on approach and use practical examples to teach readers how to solve the problems they face in designing with CSS - until now. Eric Meyer provides a variety of carefully crafted projects that teach how to use CSS and why particular methods were chosen. The web site includes all of the files needed to complete the tutorials in the book. In addition, bonus information is be posted.

What people are saying about CSS Cookbook

"Christopher's fantastic cookbook will give you solutions to pretty much all of the CSS problems you'll come up against in your day-to-day web design work, saving you bags of time and frustration. This guy is one of the industry's brightest minds -- he really knows his stuff."
--Chris Mills, Opera Software

Learn how to solve the real problems you face with CSS. This cookbook offers hundreds of practical examples for using CSS to format your web pages, and includes code samples you can use right away. You'll find exactly what you need, from the basics to complex hacks and workarounds.

Each recipe explains how to customize a solution to meet your needs, and each chapter features a sample design that showcases the topics discussed. You'll learn about the behavior of the latest browsers-including IE 8, Firefox 3, Safari 4, and Google Chrome-and how you can resolve differences in the ways they display your web pages. Arranged in a convenient format for quick reference, this third edition is a valuable companion for anyone working with CSS.

• Learn the basics, such as the CSS rule structure
• Work with web typography and page layout
• Create effects for images and other page elements
• Learn techniques for configuring lists, forms, and tables
• Design effective web navigation and create custom links
• Get creative by combining CSS with JavaScript
• Learn useful troubleshooting techniques
• Explore features of HTML5 and CSS3

Cascading Style Sheets For Dummies covers the essentials you need to know to incorporate CSS technology into Web projects. This friendly guide covers the enhanced features of the technology that allows you to have total control over the look and feel of your Web projects.