I’ve had a bad dose of the man flu recently, so I’ve not been able to get much work done, but its at least given me the opportunity to get stuck into Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke, which arrived a couple of days ago.

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding this book, and from what I’ve read so far it seems entirely justified. Much more than just a CSS manual, Transcending CSS is a manifesto for pushing web development into the 21st Century.

It’s a big book, and it covers a lot of ground, centred around 4 main areas: Discovery, Process, Inspiration and Transcendence.

Discovery

The book opens with the Discovery phase in which Andy defines his Transcendent approach to design. For anyone not familiar with this, it’s essentially an extension of progressive enhancement, with the difference that you actually design for the more advanced MOSe browsers and utilize the full power of CSS2.1 selectors, accepting that inferior browsers *cough*IE*cough* will suffer from a reduced experience. The inevitable price of progress.

The question of limiting the user experience for 80% of your users who browse with IE is always a contentious one, but Andy makes a compelling argument and I was left feeling fairly, if not entirely, won over.

Process

The Process section was a real surprise to me as I wasn’t expecting it at all, but it’s almost worth the price of the book alone. Andy discusses what makes a good work flow process, examining the advantages and disadvantages of different systems such as wireframes, grey boxes and prototypes. It’s one of the most honest discussions I’ve ever seen on this topic and I found myself thinking “At last someone has said this” more than once during the chapter, especially when he talks about the potential pit falls of wireframes intruding into the domain of the designer and stifling creativity.

There are also some great tips of developing rapid prototypes by using CSS positioning instead of floats, due to the inherently fickle nature of floats. Something I’ll definitely be trying out in the future.

Inspiration

The Inspiration chapter kicks off with every designer’s favourite topic of late: grids. If this is something you’re interested in (I know I am) then I’d also recommend getting Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Keir Elam which I’ll be covering in another book review, but Andy does a great job of explaining the importance of grids in web design, how to construct them and highlighting great examples. There’s a fascinating examination of the strong grids used in newspapers, which flows nicely into a fictitious redesign of Newsvine, incorporating the grid principles previously discussed.

Andy then talks about finding inspiration, sometimes in the most unexpected places (like Changing Rooms wtf?!?) creating colour palettes and keeping design scrap books. This section is a little scatter shot, as each part could really be a book unto itself, but if nothing else it looks very pretty with some great images.

Transcendence

I haven’t had time to delve into the final chapter much yet, but this is really where the books investigates the future of CSS design, bringing together much of the discussion on meaningful markup and more advanced CSS2.1 selectors. The manifesto of designing primarily for more advanced browsers is put into practice with a step by step guide to producing a site, squeezing every last drop out of semantic markup and CSS techniques. The actually example is a revelation in terms of its strict adherence to semantics and really shows how you can go to town with a visual design without resorting to a mess of <div>s.

The finale to the book is a tempting glimpse at what will be possible with CSS3 including multiple background images, multi column text and even the holy grail of CSS3 design: the Advanced Layout Module.

Get it Now

As you’ll gather, the book tackles pretty much every issue facing modern web designers today. If you’re an avid follower of the web design blogosphere then you’ll be familiar with much of the material. In fact, it almost felt like this book was a compendium of the best bits of the web over the last 18 months or so. That’s no criticism though. The book is bang up to date, and it makes a compelling read, as you really feel Andy’s passion for what he does shining through.

In short, this book is a must have for anyone wanting to take their design skills to the next level. Get Transcending CSS now.