Read CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition Online
Authors: Eric A. Meyer
Tags: #COMPUTERS / Web / Page Design
Eric A. Meyer has been working with the Web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and web standards. A widely read author, he is also the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting (www.complexspiral.com), which counts among its clients America Online; Apple Computer, Inc.; Wells Fargo Bank; and Macromedia, which described Eric as "a critical partner in our efforts to transform Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 into a revolutionary tool for CSS-based design."
Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the visual designer and campus web coordinator for the Case Western Reserve University web site, where he also authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was Project Coordinator for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first encyclopedia of urban history published fully and freely on the Web.
Author of Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS (New Riders), Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly), and CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), as well as numerous articles for the O'Reilly Network, Web Techniques, and Web Review, Eric also created the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts and coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C's official CSS Test Suite. He has lectured to a wide variety of organizations, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New York Public Library, Cornell University, and the University of Northern Iowa. Eric has also delivered addresses and technical presentations at numerous conferences, among them An Event Apart (which he cofounded), the IW3C2 WWW series, Web Design World, CMP, SXSW, the User Interface conference series, and The Other Dreamweaver Conference.
In his personal time, Eric acts as List Chaperone of the highly active css-discuss mailing list (www.css-discuss.org), which he cofounded with John Allsopp of Western Civilisation and which is now supported by evolt.org. Eric lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you've been led to believe. For nine years, he was the host of "Your Father's Oldsmobile," a Big Band-era radio show heard weekly on WRUW 91.1 FM in Cleveland.
You can find more detailed information on Eric's personal web page at
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric
.
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topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.
The animals on the cover of
CSS: The Definitive Guide
, Third
Edition, are salmon (
salmonidae
), which is a family of fish consisting
of many different species. Two of the most common salmon are the Pacific salmon and the
Atlantic salmon.
Pacific salmon live in the northern Pacific Ocean off the coasts of North America and
Asia. There are five subspecies of Pacific salmon, with an average weight of 10 to 30
pounds. Pacific salmon are born in the fall in freshwater stream gravel beds, where they
incubate through the winter and emerge as inch-long fish. They live for a year or two in
streams or lakes and then head downstream to the ocean. There they live for a few years,
before heading back upstream to their exact place of birth to spawn and then die.
Atlantic salmon live in the northern Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of North America and
Europe. There are many subspecies of Atlantic salmon, including the trout and the char.
Their average weight is 10 to 20 pounds. The Atlantic salmon family has a life cycle
similar to that of its Pacific cousins, and also travels from freshwater gravel beds to the
sea. A major difference between the two, however, is that the Atlantic salmon does not die
after spawning; it can return to the ocean and then return to the stream to spawn again,
usually two or three times.
Salmon, in general, are graceful, silver-colored fish with spots on their backs and
fins. Their diet consists of plankton, insect larvae, shrimp, and smaller fish. Their
unusually keen sense of smell is thought to help them navigate from the ocean back to the
exact spot of their birth, upstream past many obstacles. Some species of salmon remain
landlocked, living their entire lives in freshwater.
Salmon are an important part of the ecosystem, as their decaying bodies provide
fertilizer for streambeds. Their numbers have been dwindling over the years, however.
Factors in the declining salmon population include habitat destruction, fishing, dams that
block spawning paths, acid rain, droughts, floods, and pollution.
The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover
font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe
Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed.