If you're not familiar with O'Reilly's cookbook series, they're books with a basic formula: Problem, Solution, and Discussion sections for every 'recipe.' Each recipe is a script, program, command, or piece of code for implementing within a large part of a whole.

Simple example, you're creating a Web site and you need to add a form. You can look up a recipe for creating just the form. In CSS Cookbook, get recipes for using CSS to create pull quotes, to add a background image, to build various types of layouts, and to manage forms.

This book is for those who know HTML and have a basic understanding of CSS. Like any food cookbook, the recipes are there when you're ready for them. It's not for reading from cover to cover. When you get stuck on a problem or want to know how to create a printer-friendly page, refer to the recipe.

The main issue with the book is its use of tables in some of the recipes. With the growing number of Web sites moving towards Web standards compliance, tables are finally going away as a layout tool. Their only purpose is for organizing data.

Don't expect recipes on fly-out or drop down menus. This is not a bad thing as CSS is not the ideal way to create such menus as there are many problems with implementing them. However, the book could use more recipes as others in the Cookbook series have 400, 500, and even 700 pages. This one is just 270 pages.

Schmitt does an excellent job of explaining each problem and solution with his minimal jargon and easy writing style. The table of contents provides the list of the types of problems covered in this book. If these are things you wish to implement, then you'll be happy with the purchase.

Originally posted on meryl.net