Zen is different it illustrates in beautifully coloured pages just what is possible with CSS. I for one was surprised that such things were possible as my first outing with CSS made me think that previous design layouts using tables seemed more flexible. After reading through Zen I have a renewed vigour to tackle and apply CSS properly across the projects I now take on.

I recommend this book for many reasons but the main one is that it clears the cobwebs from your imagination and shows what is possible.


Excellent book for all web designers out there!   December 12, 2005
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book complements the already successful Zen Garden web site. It takes examples submitted to the site and then picks them apart, giving the reader an understanding of how the designers achieved their results.
Each example serves to highlight different areas of web/graphic design; layout, typography, use of images etc, whilst providing a unique way to utilise CSS.
There are no examples to work through as such, but you can d/l the CSS for each submission from the Zen Garden site. You can then build the CSS up from scratch, which will show you how each property effects the final result.
To summarise, this is a very useful book that not only serves to show off the amazing potential of CSS, but is a valuable resource for web/graphic design theory. I would definitely recommend it!


Covers the Design aspects as well as the CSS coding   November 21, 2005
 12 out of 12 found this review helpful

The book started out as the website CSS Zen Garden (www.csszengarden)which has become a popular Internet Site. The CSS Zen Garden shows has CSS can be used to transform a single webpage to look completely different by just changing the CSS, the html stays exactly the same.
The book is different to most CSS books in that it looks at the overall design and sees how they can be implemented in CSS. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is that the book goes much further into the design aspect than most other books, and is useful if you want to learn how to "design" rather than just create a website. On the negative side the book is not very good to use as a reference.

The book does not go into too much detail on some of the aspects, and often gives a web url to go for more information. This allows the authors to keep to the core content (the design aspect), but does mean that you often have to go and look elsewhere to get the full details. This does detract from some of the usefulness of having a hardcopy of the book, as you have to spend time in front of the computer looking up the urls.

Most webmasters would benefit from reading this book, but I'd also recommend getting a reference guide to refer to once you've started implementing websites using CSS.