This book attempts to cater to that sentiment. All of the exposition—which I do invite
the reader to tackle—is tucked away into Chapters 2 and 3, available for a quick “re-
wind” if you realize that you might have missed something.
The nonexpository parts are about making cool stuff happen: nailing down faithfulness
to composites, getting the upper hand over bugs, building template markup that can
survive redesigns, and manifold other topics.
What You Should Know Before You Read This Book
This book makes one basic assumption: that you’re familiar with the scope of HTML
4.01 elements, CSS selectors, and CSS property/value pairs. The companion website
for this book includes reference tables that link to exhaustive descriptions of HTML
and CSS on third-party sites, but it will be far easier to follow along if you’re already
familiar with the capabilities of HTML and CSS.
In addition, this book will be easier to digest if you’ve gained an understanding of the
separation of behavior, presentation, content, and structure into separate layers within
a site or application.
If you feel uneasy about any of this, O’Reilly’s Definitive Guides and Pocket Referen-
ces for HTML and CSS come highly recommended.
For the benefit of readers who may have overestimated their knowledge, the basics of
page, stylesheet, and element structure are covered as briefly as possible.
The Ideal Reader
You might be an ideal reader of this book if:
• You’re confident when the time comes to start building the server side of an ap-
plication, but redesigns get on your nerves because you’re forced to dive back into
the code and revise the bits of markup that are interspersed within it. The most
effective solution to this problem is called the “CSS Zen” technique, exemplified
by Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden. This book explains CSS Zen—structuring pro-
duction of markup so that redesign efforts can be confined to stylesheets—from a
perspective suited to engineers.
• You’re skilled at the use of a web-centric Integrated Development Environment
(IDE) such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Visual Studio, but your expecta-
tions routinely collide with its limitations. Left unattended, an IDE typically inserts
all manner of cruft (i.e., “excess; superfluous junk”) into web materials, egregiously
violating the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Principle. This occurs because IDEs are
one-size-fits-all solutions. This book explains HTML and CSS in enough detail that
you can start configuring your tools of choice to handle the specific cases you work
with every day.
xviii | Preface