The Book of CSS3
An excellent introduction to CSS3 - both what you can do with it now and what is proposed for the future.
My Rating: 
Pros
- A practical guide to CSS3 that introduces you to the parts of CSS3 that you can use now and shows you how to use them.
- Discusses the CSS3 modules separately so you can see what belongs to which module.
- Indicates what stage each particular module is at so that you know how usable it is. In one instance there is an addendum at the end of a chapter where a minor naming change occurred with the standard after the chapter had been written.
- Clearly indicates the difference between CSS3 and HTML5
Cons
- At least one reference in a table to something that might be implemented in Firefox 4 even though Firefox 4 was out in plenty of time to be included in the tests. Also lots of table references to what might be included in IE9 even though IE9 was out before the book. These are corrected on the associated web site.
Description
- First Edition: 2011
- 278 page paperback
- Published by No Starch press Inc
- ISBN: 978-1-59327-286-9
- A developers guide to the future of web design
- Author Peter Gasston
Review
Writing about something that is still only at a draft stage and subject to change is a far more difficult task than writing about something that is an established standard. This book makes it very clear that doing so is not impossible. Even though the book is dealing with something that is in effect a moving target it manages to almost keep up with the changes that occurred before the book was finally published.
This book is also a very practical guide and concentrates mainly on those parts of CSS3 that are actually usable in web pages and goes into great detail as to how to use what the browsers currently implement. It also discusses how that varies from what the current proposal currently says and indicates what changes we should expect to happen in the short term (as a working draft we can't really tell what will happen long term although the more browsers support something now the less likely it should be that it will change).
This book starts with the most usable parts of CSS3 and moves progressively through to some that are only supported by one browser so far and finishing with a chapter on the best of the CSS3 modules that are yet to be implemented at all. This presents the information in the most useful way for anyone who wishes to use any of the CSS3 that is actually usable.
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