A friend was asking about a Firebug-like plugin for Internet Explorer, and that got me thinking about the importance of being able to see how a particular browser is interpreting one’s CSS. While there are many good tools for developing CSS, there’s nothing better than actually trying things on multiple browsers. Fortunately, at least some developer tools are available for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
If you’re looking to learn CSS, Eric Meyer on CSS is a great place to start. Eric Meyer has long been considered one of the top CSS gurus on the web and while he’s been known to have strong opinions, he’s also very practical without being dogmatic about the use of CSS. He’s got a deep curiosity of how different browsers implement CSS and every now and then finds something which surprises him; I find the browser blog entries his most interesting.
This book is based around ten CSS projects for which you can download the files. You change the project’s file throughout the chapter and can check your work against final versions which are included. This book was popular enough that a follow-on book was released, More Eric Meyer on CSS.
My wife brought up a question she was asked about the dotted-line box that shows up around a link when you use the back button to return to a page, like the picture at the right. Is it possible to remove the box? Yes it is, but there are a few things to consider before doing that.