preface

CSS was proposed in 1994 and first implemented (partially) by Internet Explorer 3 in 1996. It was somewhere around that time I discovered the wonderful View Source button and realized all the secrets of a web page were there for me to decipher in plain text. I taught myself HTML and CSS by playing in a text editor and seeing what worked. It was a fun excuse to spend as much time as possible on the internet.

In the meantime, I needed to find a real career. I went on to earn a degree in computer science. Little did I know that the two would come crashing together in the 2000s as the concept of “web developer” emerged.

I’ve been in tune with CSS since the very beginning. Even when I’m working, it’s play. I’ve worked on the backend and the frontend, yet I’ve always found myself to be the resident CSS expert on every team I’ve been on. It’s often the most neglected part of the web stack. Once you’ve been on a project with clean CSS, you never want to do without it again. After seeing it in action, even seasoned web developers ask, “How do I learn CSS?”

There isn’t one concise, straightforward answer to this question. It’s not a matter of learning one or two quick tips. Rather, you need to understand all the disparate parts of the language and how they fit together. Some books make a good beginner-level introduction to CSS, but many developers already have a basic understanding. Some books teach a lot of useful tricks but assume the reader has mastery over the language.