If you are looking for a complete site design solutions book, this is not it—but if you are seeking a book to help you solve many common problems—then this book will serve as a useful tool for you.

— Nate Klaiber

Design patterns have been used with great success in software programming. They improve productivity, creativity, and efficiency in web design and development, and they reduce code bloat and complexity. In the context of CSS and HTML, design patterns are sets of common functionality that work across various browsers and screen readers, without sacrificing design values or accessibility or relying on hacks and filters. But until now they have not been applied systematically to HTML and CSS web design and development.

With the help of Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns, you can reap the benefits of using design patterns in your HTML and CSS code. The book provides you with all the CSS and HTML design patterns you need. Web development expert and author Michael Bowers then takes you through multiple design patterns for text, backgrounds, borders, images, forms, layouts, and much more. He shows you exactly how each one works, and how to use them most effectively in your own projects. After you learn about these design patterns, you'll wonder how you ever developed web sites without them!

About The Author
Michael Bowers is a software developer who has been cranking out all kinds of code for 17 years professionally and 25 years personally. He taught himself to program when he was 14 and hasn't stopped since.



He has been the chief software developer and architect for many projects ranging from web sites to application frameworks to compilers. He has built intranet applications, automated factories with robotics, architected databases, programmed handheld devices, created sales management systems, and much more. His favorite languages include HTML, CSS, XML, SQL, C#, C, Visual Basic, and ASP.



Michael is also an accomplished pianist with a bachelor's degree in music composition and a master's degree in music theory. In his spare time he loves to improvise, arrange, and compose music.

Customer Reviews & Comments
If ever you found yourself wishing that every single possible combination of CSS properties was documented in one comprehensive volume, the solution has just arrived. Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns is just that, a huge guide to each and every HTML and CSS combination you could possibly think of. Floats, clearing, 6 types of box models, absolute and relative positioning - it's all there. Just as with programming, using coding conventions and understanding recurring combinations can help speed up the entire production work-flow. I am always drawn to the page which describes a book author. Somehow, knowing a bit of background info helps me peer into their thought process as I read the book. In this case, the author Michael Bowers is an accomplished pianist and has a PhD in music theory. It is interesting, because just as notes and pauses can create song, so design elements and whitespace create page layouts. Michael has brought that same sense of composure to this book, describing the intricacies of code interaction and inheritance. He has done a great job of encapsulating many possible page layouts, through having conducted thousands of test cases, paring them down to the most stable, cross-browser compatible solutions. This has resulted in over 350 readily usable design patterns. These can be combined to create limitless possibilities for your own work. Most experienced front-end architects will find themselves agreeing with a lot of the principles that are covered in this book, and for those just starting out, it will bring you up to speed on what you need to know. There are several examples which incorporate JavaScript, but most of the book focuses on practical, real-world application of HTML and CSS, the bread and butter of all professional web developers. I wish that this type of resource had existed when I was first learning the ropes. It would have saved me countless hours of frustration learning how various aspects of CSS interact, and trying to figure out why Internet Explorer doesn't seem to get it right. One of the awesome things about this book is that Michael has made all of the examples readily available on the companion site, with the topics broken out by chapter. So, rather than give you a laundry list of what's in this book, I will simply point you there: cssDesignPatterns.com. I really can't say enough good things about the book. If you're not already a CSS guru but want to achieve a higher level of proficiency, I'd recommend checking it out. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)