Everything You Knew about CSS is Wrong, by Rachel Andrew, Kevin Yank

I have seldom seen a more deceptive title. The authors take one aspect of CSS, creating a grid design, and show how it can be done better using the latest CSS techniques. They have done this well, but it hardly warrants the bombastic title because they don't cover "everything" you know about CSS.

I am a little surprised that this book needed to be published. It is a short book (116 pages) on a very narrow topic and could have been better served by publishing it as a series of blog posts. The author explain the topic well and provide code and screenshots, but the book format is so limited. The other problem is that the new CSS technique will not work with older browsers and hence it does serve more follow-up on browser compatibility and special cases.

The publishers should have chosen a more specific title, say "Next Generation CSS Table Layouts" which sounds attractive enough and more meaningful. They should have asked the authors to provide more content, say 200 pages worth to discuss backward compatibility and other nuances.

Tags: programming web