Getting Started with CSS

Knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is essential for developing modern, attractive websites, but many beginners are put off by the need to learn about unfamiliar concepts, such as selectors, properties, and classes, before they can achieve anything. Getting StartED with CSS takes a practical approach by showing you how to use CSS in simple stages, starting by changing the default appearance of HTML tags to improve the look of text and links. It assumes no prior knowledge of CSS and avoids bombarding you with unnecessary technical details. At the same time, it explains all the main points and acts as a reference that you can come back to when you need to refresh your memory. More advanced concepts are introduced gradually, so that by the end of the book you'll have a solid understanding of all the main aspects of CSS. Particular attention is paid to avoiding the common pitfalls of beginners, enabling you to create websites that not only look good, but also are easy to maintain.

• Requires no previous knowledge of CSS
• Instant results―starts off by showing how improve the look of a website stage by stage
• Doesn't bombard you with endless rules and jargon

David Powers is an Adobe Community Expert for Dreamweaver and author of a series of highly successful books on PHP, including PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy and Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8. As a professional writer, he has been involved in electronic media for more than 30 years, first with BBC radio and television and more recently with the Internet. His clear writing style is valued not only in the English-speaking world; several of his books have been translated into Spanish and Polish. What started as a mild interest in computing was transformed almost overnight into a passion, when David was posted to Japan in 1987 as BBC correspondent in Tokyo. With no corporate IT department just down the hallway, he was forced to learn how to fix everything himself. When not tinkering with the innards of his computer, he was reporting for BBC television and radio on the rise and collapse of the Japanese bubble economy. Since leaving the BBC to work independently, he has built up an online bilingual database of economic and political analysis for Japanese clients of an international consultancy. When not pounding the keyboard writing books or dreaming of new ways of using PHP and other programming languages, David enjoys nothing better than visiting his favorite sushi restaurant. He has also translated several plays from Japanese.