A few months ago when my daughter was four years old, she stood beside my desk chair and asked, "Mommy, where's your wipes it?"
I looked up from the computer screen. "My what, sweetheart?"
"Your wipes it."
It's been almost exactly four months since I decided to "go professional" as a web designer, and I'm suddenly seized with the desire to pause a moment and take stock. In four months I've come a long way. For one thing, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. That's good. I still might only be treading water, but at least I'm not lying at the bottom of the pond.
The title of this book is particularly apt because solutions for designing with web standards is exactly what it's about. Beyond that, the book is difficult to define. It's not a sermon on web standards, although almost every example shows the benefits of doing so. On the other hand, it's not just a manual on CSS, although Cederholm shows how to markup and style everything from lists to forms to layouts.
It isn't often you can call a technical book lovely, but this one is. The Zen of CSS Design is one of those rare books in which every element seems to come together in perfect balance and harmony. Kind of Zen, actually. In my admittedly inexpert opinion, this is the best book on web design to come out this year. For me personally, it's been the best I've ever read. I don't know if it is the result of a random congruency of time, level of learning and need, but this book has inspired and excited me about web design more than any other.
