Gadgetopia

I read this book on the plane to and from Chicago. Eric Meyer is apparently a CSS God, although I hadn’t heard about him before this book came out.

(Update: See the comments — turns out I had heard of him…)

In the end, the book wasn’t for me. If you’re a CSS hacker of some repute, you’re probably not going to get a lot out of this book. But if you’ve just started CSS and want to become such a hacker, this one is right up your alley.

The book is divided into “projects.” In the beginning of each chapter, Meyer states what you’re going to try and do, then walks you though every line of CSS to get there, explaining what you’re doing along the way.

The idea is that you’ll download the project files from the companion Web site, and follow along — changing the CSS as he writes, then refreshing your pages. This is a fantastic way to do it, and is perfect for the beginner who wants to see exactly what their changes produce.

Sadly, however, I was on a airplane at the time, which doesn’t lend itself well to coding, and rather than completing long-winded projects, I was really looking for some wicked tips and theories to earn myself entrance to CSS Nirvana.

I did learn a few things. The chapter on fixed background positioning was good, as was the last chapter in the book, where he tries to take the layout of the book, and convert it into CSS for equivalent display on the Web. The best bits for me, it turned out, where the little sidenotes in the margins.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good book. I was just the wrong audience. He has another one — More Eric Meyer on CSS. Perhaps I’ll try that one.