If you’re like me it’s December 26^th, you’re slowly waking from a holiday-sweet induced stupor, and you take stock. Surrounding you are a dazzling array of gifts every bit as personal as they are engrossing. No? Well then, this week on BloomBurst will be a treat. Gather up your returns and those gift cards. We’ve got some real tokens for your professional affection.

First this week is the excellent book Beginning CSS Web Development by Simon Collison (ISBN 1-59059-689-7). Don’t let the ‘Beginning’ throw you; this handy reference contains all that an aspiring web slinger needs to know about the separation between syntax and style. The tone is informative without being presumptuous, the pacing is excellent, and all techniques are applied directly to real world examples.

The book begins by reviewing attributes of common html elements. These include text, color, backgrounds, images, lists, links, etc. With this toolset firmly established Simon then moves on to combining them into a number of useful layouts. He truthfully acknowledges when certain hacks are in use and, if so, what the potential pitfalls are.

Beginning CSS Web Development has an honor that is rare for most of my technical references: a position right next to my monitor. Its information is so well laid out that it allows for quick spot checking of work; even well after the initial binding breaks have occurred. If you do any kind of work that outputs to a browser window you owe it to yourself to grab this book.