The goal of the "Functional CSS" series of books is to cover the entirety of HTML and CSS by building mini-applications that accomplish tasks commonly handled by JavaScript programs. Web applications are integrations of many complementary technologies. This series recognizes that and places a strong emphasis on learning many different features of HTML and CSS side by side. This is why the chapter titles are names of the applications: Toggle Widget, Elastic Navigation Bar, Click-Activated Dropdown Menu, On-Demand Menu with 3D Effect, and Slideshow with Pause and Play Controls. A wide variety of HTML and CSS elements, in proper combinations, are necessary to implement each of these programs. This immersive and application-centric quality of the "Functional CSS" series does not yield to a simple feature-based structuring, where each chapter focuses on a particular set of HTML and CSS aspects such as Positioning, Element Types, Animations, 3D Transforms, and Text Effects. For example, all of the latter functionalities are employed together to build a full-screen single-page website in the last two cases of this book. The main motivation behind the immersive approach is to provide a process through which the reader can build a deep and connected HTML and CSS knowledge base that can then be successfully utilized to construct new web applications of the reader's choosing.
As such, all of the volumes of the "Functional CSS" series are high-commitment materials. These books have to be studied. Perusal of the chapters may work for some experts. Beginners and intermediate-level developers should set aside the necessary time to work through the tutorials and to experiment with the examples.
