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Project Overview

In keeping with the practical, hands-on nature of the book, I've divided it up into a series of 10 projects梕ach one effectively a chapter. It is possible to skip around from project to project as the spirit moves you, as each project was written to stand on its own as much as possible. However, the book was still written with the "linear reader" in mind; if you read from front to back, you should find that the projects build on one another.

With a few exceptions, the projects are titled in as self-obvious a way as possible. For example, Project 1, "Converting an Existing Page," takes a page designed using only HTML markup and spacer GIFs, and converts it to a pure CSS design that uses positioning for layout instead of tables.

Projects 2 and 3 cover some fairly basic projects, from styling a photo gallery to making a financial report look better than it would by default. Project 4 increases the sophistication somewhat by showing how to use backgrounds in creative ways, and how to mix relative and absolute measures in order to set up translucency effects.

Then, in Projects 5 through 7, the topic of discussion is using lists in various ways. The first of these three projects uses a list of links to create a sidebar menu, complete with two different layouts for the same list. The second project in the trilogy takes a series of nested lists and turns them into a dynamic set of "drop-down" menus that work in most browsers (and that includes IE/Win). The last of the three projects explores using the Sliding Doors technique to turn a list of links into a set of "tabs."

Projects 8 and 9 consider the styling of a weblog and the styling of a home page around that weblog, respectively. Project 10 is the most ambitious and complex of the book: It takes a design for the CSS Zen Garden and works through the application from design to markup. This was done by soliciting a design from the Garden's creator and then working to translate the design into a styled document. For those of you who work in the print world, we take a comp and turn it into a finished product.

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