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What our customer's say!

"Must have. Period.", Must have book if you work with this stuff. Nothing more to add to what all the other 5 star reviews have said. Andy is at the forefront and cutting edge of how to apply the css and proper code for building a site.

"A book that will help good Web designers become better", Warning: Transcending CSS is not for beginners. It might not even be for intermediate CSS users. It is for advanced users who have made several ho-hum, run-of-the-mill websites with CSS and are looking for ways to put some oomph in their designs. There is code in this book - XHTML markup and CSS syntax are given for all of the examples explained in the book - but it will be useless to readers who don't already know how to create table-less XHTML and CSS websites. This is not an instructional book; it is an inspirational book. The first paragraph makes the objectives clear:

"Transcendent CSS is more than a plea to use the latest, coolest CSS. It's a quest to use the lessons you're learning in CSS as a means to becoming the finest artist and designer you can be. Transcendent CSS asks you to embrace the new rather than the old and to stimulate new ways to find inspiration, create more agile and appropriate workflows for Web design, and encourage yourself to constantly learn more about both the design and the technical issues with which you work."

As one might expect of a book concerned with art rather than technique, it is visually stunning. It is filled with pictures, every one in color, which probably explains the higher-than-average price. Many are screenshots of websites, but even more depict hundreds of examples of color and design from the real world. This book is likely to appeal to designers and non-designers alike, if only because it is so visually appealing.

The first two chapters of the book are largely concerned with things one might expect to find in a web design book: markup, layout, prototyping, best practices, process, and workflow. Chapter three, "Inspiration," is entirely different, as it directs the reader to seek inspiration in all sorts of places outside of the World Wide Web and urges the designer to think less about technology and more about art. Chapter four returns to a more traditional results-based approach, but this time with an eye toward the future: CSS3 and advanced layouts are demonstrated. It is important for Web designers to keep the future in mind, but it can be frustrating to see examples of slick techniques with so little browser support that implementation is impractical.

Transcending CSS is a book for competent designers who want to make more beautiful websites without sacrificing flexibility, extensibility or standards-compliance.


"Web Design Primer, Not a How-To Manual", I wanted to like this book. If you are new to design, it contains useful sections on page prototyping, grid-based design, color, and design practices. These are things designers should learn about, especially if they arrive in web design from other fields. I give the book three stars for these positive features and for its high production values.

Physically, the book is about two inches wider than a standard programming book. The paper is heavy and coated with full color all over the place. This is nice, but the author goes too far. Some pages include pictures of websites, but many other pages are filled with seemingly random photographs and montage works. In fact, pages 239-242 are fully dedicated to a scrapbook sample. Page 243 includes some text, but 244 is another wasted page. The images are sedate, and these picture pages seem to take up a quarter of the book. White space abounds. Consequently, as others have noted, the book is light on useful information.

I understand the attraction of grids. CSS divs and table cells both lend themselves to grid layouts. I know it is in vogue to emulate the multi-column layouts found in a newspaper page. I've read plenty about usability and how people actually surf. Unfortunately, the author's fixation with these conventions leads to dull page design. The most interesting, useful technique in the whole book involves the intelligent use of relative and absolute positioning to displace background images so that they break up the outlines of the blocks.

On the down side, the author advocates the use of browser-specific style sheets and the use of CSS3 style rules. Current browsers still have problems with some CSS 2.1 rules. The CSS3 rules will be great when browsers support them, but they won't help you write pages that work on multiple browsers and platforms. And that's the real issue with this book. It contains information that is useful to beginners, but it's not really a beginner book. This book won't have you writing CSS and XHTML in a few hours. The strange mixture of beginning and advanced materials mixture may confuse beginners while offering little that is new or useful to more experienced designers. Add in the sheer volume of wasted space and I have only one recommendation: Borrow the book from the library.

"Inspires better design, markup, and syling", This book is a real gem! I read it often just for inspiration. The author is passionate about design, markup, and styling and it rubs off on me. Transcending CSS fills a niche somewhere between the technical manuals and design books. It has had a clear impact on my work.

"Good advice for the intermediate/advanced designer", Transcending CSS is a book that, as it explains in its opening, isn't intended as a basic overview of CSS. It assumes a solid base of knowledge, and if you have that, the book can be extremely beneficial.

That's not to say that the book wouldn't be useful to a novice designer, but they might want to pick it up again after they have more experience with the CSS selectors and attributes Clarke uses.

The book has a lot of material regarding separating layout and style and making semantically correct HTML, which is important for both designers and developers to understand as web pages become more and more feature-rich and stylized. Clarke presents it in an easy-to-understand format, and helps the reader see semantic markup everywhere.

The sections regarding layout and inspiration were very well done, however I felt that more could have been done here. I suppose that it's forgivable since it is a book about CSS and web design rather than design theory, but I found those sections to be the most interesting.

I highly recommend this book to any designer or developer looking to get a better grasp of where web design is going and what constitutes good web design.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Design like a pro by "Content Out" method", This book's purpose is NOT to teach you CSS. It has great CSS examples but it
assumes you know CSS.

What this book does teach you is how to design with CSS. It starts the process
with the concept of designing "content out". If you are a programmer who simply
replaced table elements with div elements and thought you were using CSS, think again.

A real CSS artistic designer will look at the content first, then choose, in a logical fashion, the most sensible html elements to display that content. Then the designer will style those elements. I now look at content first when I used to look at layout first.

One of the goals of "transcending CSS" was to bridge the gap between designer and programmer. The book achieves this goal. Programmers will now understand the design process better. By using the process effectively, you'll end up with a flexible design that can be easily skinned.

One of the best things about the book is the comments in the margins. These comments may be notes about usage of CSS, links to great resources on the web, or alternative designs that can be used. I learned as much from the margins as from the body of the book.

The last part of the book applies the book's concepts to some eye-catching designs. If you utilized any of these design techniques, you'd have a sharp looking web site.

The last chapter of the book talks about what is coming in CSS 3. You might think you can't use any of that stuff yet but the book shows you how you can get started today.

This book is excellent quality too. In fact it is the ONLY technical book I have ever bought that didn't have mistakes. The source code works. The links to web sites are valid. The text is free of poor grammar and worse spelling. The author's style of writing is colloquial, smooth, and informative. The narrative is not dry and boring. The chapters keep your attention all the way through. I read this book from page 1 to the very last page.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the design process from a real designer/artist perspective.



"Utter garbage...and a waste of money", In addition to what people have already said about the techniques not realistically being usable for a while yet, the problem I had with this book is that a lot of it is like listening to someone's opinions about how you should work instead of being instructed new techniques and let you decide for yourself. The author has NOTHING of substance to say...nothing to merit you plunking down $30-50 for sure. Probably 70% of this is the author's opinion about how he thinks designers should work...like not using Dreamweaver or Flash. He says working in Dreamweaver makes it harder to learn. I've hand-coded and used WYSIWYG's and it comes down to a preference. And actually new version of Dreamweaver has many sample pages and code blocks that I think a great way for noobs to learn.

Also, in his list of negatives of WYSIWYGs he says that you have to edit multiple pages with them unlike hand-coding CSS where you only edit the external style sheet. This is just wrong...and anyone who has spent ANY time with WYSIWYGs knows that you can edit external style sheets just as easily. And if he had actually used a program like Dreamweaver or GoLive he might have also discovered things like templates which speed up your work pace tremendously.

When the author does try to instruct, instead of getting on his soap box about how he thinks you should work, it is often incoherent and/or incomplete. Like when he says that when you remove visual presentation from table-based designs, it makes the content order incomprehensible. Huh? To make things worse the illustration for this, the content looks fine and orderly.

Another beef I have is that the material here is stretched out. I guess this was to justify it being worthy of a book (a $50 one no less!). Lots of beautiful photography that have nothing to do with content are taking up lots of full pages. Many times material is repeated and illustrated on full pages unnecessarily. But conversely, when he touches upon something that leaves you with questions he doesn't elaborate. So you don't learn.

This book actually angers me because its so pretentious with its coffee-table book presentation and almost total lack of any substance. If you've ever talked to a pretentious designer who you suspected was all talk, well now you can have that same "wonderful" experience in book form because that's what it feels like.

I'm giving it 2 stars only because of the occasional helpful passage and also for the way they illustrated CSS blocks by superimposing the selector over the block so you can see exactly what it refers to. I think with a better content this would be a great way to learn. A MUCH better alternative to this is Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm. Not without its faults too but they are minor compared to how much is packed in that little book. But this one is definitely one to skip. This is bargain bin material.

"The way forward", Andy Clarke's book is great source of inspiration for all those who want to develop better websites.
If there is something like "truth" in the realm of webdesign, then a good part of this truth has been captured by Andy Clarke in his brilliant book.

The book contains ideas, approaches, examples, explanations, images, code, experiences : all you need to think forward and to pick the ideas you need to improve your skills and approach.

"CSS A new way of thinking", Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter) is not so much as a "How To" as it is a "Why To" book. Andy Clarke is an evangelist for a new and better way of designing for the web. There is an ever growing need to present content in the most effective and appealing way for a verity of different browsers. Not everyone uses the same browser and different browsers don't do implement CSS functionality the same way. Plus older browsers may not be compatible with CSS in current use.

Andy Clarke's premise is that instead of developing the layout first and then fitting the content in to the layout, start by organizing the content first and then implement your layout design on top of your content. This way, the content will always be presented in an organized, effective and appealing way no matter what browser the content is being display on.


"I'd Say... this book is wonderfull!", I bought this book under an advice I took from a blog... I thought... what the heck... I know CSS, but the plain vanilla... I have read a technical book till the end (took me almost a year) and I need something different.

I was surprised...this one is a blast to read, simply put, a delightful reading, even to take it to bed :) (Depending on the company)

Great visual quality, simple examples, and the usual obnoxious tone I tend to admire in brits, even though they don't really have the need for it ;)

If Andy Clarke is as "direct" in is classes as he is in the book, then his seminars must also be a blast to tend to, the kind of classes you don't take notes...because you don't need to.

Finally I understood what meaningful and semantic CSS are... and found out that I was applying all the technicalities correctly, but skipping the basics of its usage (I tend to confuse this word with sausage) all the way!

Attention: Too many pictures of food... in bed they tend to produce some undesired urges to get up and raid the refrigerator with strange results (Depending on the company)