What Is This Book About?

Is this book a documentation and narrative of the site? Partially. Is it a tutorial on Web design best practices and techniques? Yes, definitely. Is it a gallery of eye candy that you can refer to for inspiration when working on your own projects? No question.

What was clear to us as we wrote this book was that the Zen Garden has potential to relate so many different lessons about how modern Web design is done that a single book focused on one specialty of design, such as layout, wouldn't begin to scratch the surface. We knew that being true to the site meant covering it all. Typography, color theory, layout techniquesthey're all in here.

Will you learn CSS from The Zen of CSS Design? Yes, but not at a beginner's level. To focus on the visual techniques, it was necessary to skip the intro classes and move straight to the intermediate lessons, so to speak. Some great technical books are already on the shelves that will get you started with the basics of CSS syntax and grammar. We recommend that you grab one of those to get up to speed with the technology, and then read this book alongside it to learn how to apply the techniques in visually stimulating ways.

The CSS techniques covered in this book take a broader overview and cover solving visual problems, instead of thoroughly describing every piece of the CSS specification. Where it's appropriate, browser support levels are discussed to keep the lessons firmly grounded in reality.