EPUB: CSS

Course details

With HTML as the underpinning of every EPUB, CSS is the best and most flexible way to visually present your ebook exactly as you want. This course is an overview of CSS styling for EPUBs. Tony Harmer begins with the basics: what CSS is, how to write rules, and which selectors to use to target the individual elements of an EPUB. He then moves onto styling text and incorporating graphics. It all wraps up with a set of challenge and solution videos to test your learning, and some advanced skills to bring your EPUB to the next level.

NOTE: The techniques shown are designed to help members create reflowable EPUBs with CSS 2.1. There is some CSS3 for creating fixed-layout EPUBs covered, but the majority of the tutorials concentrate on CSS 2.1.

Learning objectives
Working with CSS selectors
Incorporating @ directives in CSS
Understanding the CSS box model
Writing more efficient code with shorthand notation
Sizing and positioning text
Including images with CSS
Styling lists
Assigning relative, absolute, and fixed positions
Floating elements

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Welcome
02 - What you should know before watching this course
03 - Quick references
04 - Using the exercise files

1. The Fundamentals

05 - What is CSS
06 - Understanding the relationship between CSS and EPUB
07 - Understanding the concept of inheritance
08 - Taking a look at the basic anatomy of a CSS rule
09 - Working with three basic CSS selectors
10 - Working with more advanced compound selectors
11 - Targeting elements with group selectors
12 - Understanding descendant selectors
13 - Using classes and IDs with compound selectors
14 - Discovering how Cascading Style Sheets are implemented
15 - Incorporating @ directives in CSS
16 - Understanding fixed and relative units
17 - Understanding the CSS box model
18 - Including comments inside CSS
19 - Writing more efficient code with shorthand notation

2. Working with Text

20 - Understanding the special environment of the EPUB reading system
21 - Looking at the essential text-related properties
22 - Working with sizing
23 - Working with alignment
24 - Including margins and padding
25 - Styling a heading
26 - Working with fine typographic controls
27 - Including paragraph indents
28 - Handling text hyphens, widows, and orphans
29 - Working with additional font properties

3. Working with Graphics

30 - Specifying colors in CSS
31 - Incorporating document borders
32 - Using CSS to include images
33 - Working with background properties
34 - Challenge - CSS graphics
35 - Solution - CSS graphics

4. Diving Deeper

36 - Styling lists
37 - Challenge - Styling a list
38 - Solution - Styling a list
39 - Writing smarter rules
40 - Understanding the concept of positioning
41 - Positioning - Relative
42 - Positioning - Absolute and fixed
43 - Positioning - Float
44 - Clearing floats
45 - Working with some clever CSS selectors
46 - Incorporating page breaks
47 - Figuring out CSS support levels on specific devices
48 - Challenge - Funky floats
49 - Solution - Funky floats

Conclusion

50 - Next steps

EPUB: CSS

Authors

Tony Harmer