It's Here.
February 21, 2005The wait is over.
Our author copies showed up today; the Zen of CSS Design is now an actual book, with real words and pictures and everything. Pretty crazy, really, to see the last six months of work packaged up into a neat ~300 page package.
The good news is that while the author’s copies just showed up, it would appear they were shipped when the books were sent to the distributors. Amazon is sending out shipping notices already, and those who have design work featured in the book have even started receiving their copies. Jon Hicks and Egor Kloos both saw the finished book before I did, in fact (albeit by only a few hours).
This is all I know at the moment, so hold onto the email for now until you hear from whoever you pre-ordered with. Any further communication should be directed their way anyway, since it’s thoroughly and completely out of our hands now. Thanks for your patience, it’s finally happening!
Congrats! Off to amazon I go…
Excellent, been waiting for this! Thanks for your hard work.
Fantastic and congratulations. I’ll be getting it just as soon as I can.
Wow! I can smell the pages! ;) Congratulations! I am heading to Amazon to get my copy! :)
JD
Sweet, I pre-ordered mine a week ago from Amazon. It’s got a delivery estimate of March 1 - 5, but that’s because I used super slow-mo shipping cause I’m cheap like that.
Can’t wait, I hope it’s as good as the rest of New Riders’ stuff.
Finally [pre]ordered my copy, I cannot wait to get it. Thanks Dave for the great book…I *know* it will be great.
Congratulations to both of you. I’d certainly buy it, but I’m kinda saving for a powerbook.
Can we expect “More Zen of CSS Design” in about a year and a half?
Dave: now that you have it in your hands, is there anything that you would have changed?
Congratulations!
This is one book I can’t wait to get my hands on.
Congratulations man!!!
Mine should be on its way then… woo hoo!
Does anybody know about how fast one could expect to get the book delivered if ordering right now from Amazon? I ordered the same day the book was released and according to the system it’s not expected to be shipped until the end of April, I hope this isn’t true.
When I e-mailed Amazon today and asked about it they answered:
“Our latest information indicates that “The Zen of CSS Design : Visual Enlightenment for the Web” has not yet been released and the expected release date is not known. As soon as a release date has been determined for this item, we will add that information to our web site.
While we are confident that copies will be made available, we cannot provide more precise information about the fulfillment of the order. …” (And then they split my order for free so that my other books wouldn’t have to wait.)
There’s some more discussion about this at Molly’s blog: http://www.molly.com/2005/02/21/and-now-for-a-little-zen/
Looks fantastic, Dave! Excellent work. Can’t wait to get a copy.
Congratulations Dave, Look forward to reading it :) and its looks yumm!!
Awesome. Just awesome. I can’t wait to get this. It will go perfect on my desk next to my new Cinema Display :)
Congrats!
looking good! and trust malarkey to get a nice look in on the screenshots :-p
that means my copy will be swimming its way over the atlantic as we speak…can’t wait!
My first ever order from amazon, and a great order, might I add. :)
Congratulations Dave!
Wow. Yey. I’ve been waiting for this all month. I remember February launch date and have been checking Amazon and another site daily to see whether it’s being shipped yet. Now off I go to order it.
Big congratulations Dave on a beautiful product.
It’s great to see a new trend emerging in publishing exemplified by yourself and people like David Eggers - http://mcsweeneys.net/ - that reverses the existing publishing paradigm for magazines and books.
Can’t wait to get my copy from Amazon
Congratulations Dave! I can’t wait to get my hand on it :)
Got my order in a week or two ago, can’t wait to get ahold of the copy!
I’m going to order a copy for myself as soon as possible. I’ve never brought any Web-Design related books, this will be my first. I’ll be looking foward to it.
Congrats! I think I’ll have to read this one. It was the CSS Zen Garden that originally got me interested in webdesign. Looking forward to it.
Congrats Dave, it looks great. I’m sure it reads great too.
I’ve ordered a copy and am really looking forward to reading it. I haven’t been this excited since Real World Camera Raw! :)
I’ve got mine on order. Can’t wait.
Congratulations. :)
If you wanna get a copy shipped within 24h then go to: http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321303474
CSS ZEN garden so makes me jelous. I must get this an become as good as yinz guys/girls whatever. GOOD WORK ON EVERYTHING ON THAT SITE. Im gettin’ the book asap.
Congratulations.. Yet another book I have to buy..! Great!
Yippee! Mine’s on it’s way from the publisher - can’t wait!
Great!
I pre-ordered last November and I’m willing to read it (but Amazon didn’t notify the shipping estimate to me, in Brazil)!
Congratulations again, Dave.
Thanks Dave for getting this book out. Having a website that promotes web standards is one thing, but doesn’t quite work when you’re trying to convince other co-workers (developers) on why they should use standards. I know it seems that by now everyone would have heard of the garden… but now that the book is officially out, folks roaming around at borders and barnes & nobles will have a gander through your book as well.
It will be nice to have something to physically hold in my hands to make my case (for standards).
Although it will be fun when we can say “remember when they had to publish an actual book on why we should use styles to design our websites….”
well… it had to happen. Congratulations to you. I’m sure it will be a great success.
Many Blessings,
Dustin
I’m a student in multimedia and my professor teach the web with standards. I pre-ordered your book and i hope to control much more the power of CSS!
Wow looks really nice… nice work Dave (and not forgetting Molly!)
/me pops over to amazon for another lol…
HUH!
Amazon.com wants ~$26 which is about £13 with the poor excahange rate atm. (which says not published yet) however amazon.co.uk wants 29.99 (which says 4-6 ways delivery)
Hell, amazon.com it is then! even with $8 shipping, its still £12 less!
Hi there, I’ve been long-time reader but it’s my first comment.
I am really looking forward to reading your book.
Really.
Best wishes.
I’ll be purchasing it if only for the layout/design & pagination of the book itself.
Looking forward to it.
Sorry thats £29.99 vs $26.00
…I really must slow down and triple check what I write!
Well done, it looks great!
Pre-ordered on Amazon UK, Delivery estimate: 3 May 2005 - 5 May 2005
Not only Egor and Jon were lucky, I got mine yesterday morning. I am a bit of a sourpuss in the morning, but this one clearly made my day.
Kudos to you Dave and Molly for creating such a thrilling piece of work. It was an honor being a part of it!
Congratulations on the book! But one question before I order it, what are the contents of it? Is it a collection of designs or does the book also show CSS tips and tricks? I can’t really see it in your pictures..
I’m going to buy it regardless but I’d like to know whether or not I can advice my colleagues to buy it, as they are more interested in CSS than designs.
Thanks!
It looks gorgeous.
Congratulations to everyone invovled!
The book looks awesome! I just ordered it on Amazon, but it said it is not shippping until April 29! Whats up with that???
Awesome site! Congrats…
I just ordered your book through Amazon. Your work has been inspiring.
Mazel tov.
Now, did what happened to me happen to you? You opened the book at a random page and the very first thing you saw was a mistake?
I’ll have my nose in this book for the next few months most likely, thank you for your wonderful work.
$26.39 at amazon.com (about 14.50 GBP)
29.99 GBP at amazon.co.uk (about $53)
Twice as expensive :( Nevermind, i’ll still buy it though
Ooh, 26 GBP at compman.co.uk with free delivery!
Great to hear that the book has finally been published! I’ve been waiting for this puppy for months. I pre-ordered on February 2 from Amazon.ca and received an auto-confirm that shipping would occur on February 22. Still hasn’t shipped yet, but I’m hoping that the wait will soon be over. The book, like the garden, looks beautiful!
Great news. I preordered mine over a week and a half ago and have a shipping date of Feb 28 - Mar 2. I can’t wait.
Congrats Dave. I can’t wait to start reading :)
Ordered mine tonight. :)
I’m getting myself another one! I’m greedy like that ;)
The book covers quite a bit more than I thought it did when I first looked at it. I’ve already been using the book as a reference when discussing design issues; “Look that’s how they did it!”
Congratulations!
That simply looks so awesome!
Some day I’ll get enough money, and then I’ll immediately buy it!
your pictures got a brother salivating…ima get it just for the coffee table…here i go!
j.
Congratulations!
That may be a very useful book for me.
First off: congratulations!
But I was wondering wether every Zen Garden entry could have nice
permalinks such as http://csszengarden.com/026/ etc. A little bit of
mod_rewrite htaccess magic could do this trick.”
Aye! Mathias has a good idea. What about something like:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([1-9])(/)? index.php?cssfile=/$1/$1.css
I’d love to, I just haven’t concocted the right regex yet. This was my best guess:
RewriteRule ^/([1-9]{3,})$ index.php?cssfile=/$1/$1.css
No go. (Random Person: yours doesn’t work either.) So if someone can email me the proper regex and any other mod_rewrite voodoo I need to change this:
/133
or this:
/133/
into this:
/index.php?cssfile=/133/133.css
or even this:
/?cssfile=/133/133.css
Then I’d be more than happy to implement it.
Congratulations on the new book Dave!, those pictures look great, I will get my copy asap :)
Regards!
Hi Dave,
You *very* nearly had it. The problem was that you were searching for numbers 1-9, so that excluded 0s. I have also slightly changed it and added the forward slash to be optional.
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{3,})(/)? index.php?cssfile=/$1/$1.css
Feeling a little overwhelmed, dismayed and humbled by the fact that I’ve been designing web sites for a few years now and had somehow missed the development of CSS layouts (whilst staying at home to look after my now 2 year old boy in the most isolated capital city in the world, so hopefully understandable!), the first book that I’m going to purchase on the subject is “The Zen of CSS Design”.
I came across the site a few weeks ago and was blown away by the whole concept. When I discovered there was a book I thought “I want this”. And now, seeing the beautiful layout and reading great reviews, I know “I need this!”. Congratulations, I’m sure it will bring me up to speed with the rest of the world again.
My copy finally arrived this afternoon and I can’t wait to start going through it. Visually the book is stunning. I often visit the garden and as I was thumbing through the book, I kept saying to myself ‘Hey, I remember that design’.
I plan on keeping this book next to the laptop so it is in easy reach at all times. Congratulations and thank you for putting the garden in a form that can travel with me.
Congratulations!
The first wait is over. Amazon has just shipped it!
Now it’s two or three more weeks: International Shipping (averages 7-11 business days)
Amazing work on the Garden, looking forward for my copy of the book to arrive. I hope soon that I’ll muster enough courage to submit my own design for the zen garden. Congrats Molly, Dave, and the rest of the team. You’ve got a lot of well wishers that you probably never imagined! Along with all the other great web designers, your work is truly inspiring.
Great, i’ll have a copy in my lap before Easter :).
Today Amazon updated the availability of the book:
“Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours from Amazon.com”
Once I saw that I immediatly ordered it!
good luck with the book, Dave….
btw, just got email from Amazon…. they shipped it yesterday…too bad I have to wait not less than two weeks to get it here
Finally! One copy now ordered from amazon.com - awaiting it in my mailbox within a week or two. Really looking forward to read it! From what i’ve heard/seen it really is worth those USD 26 or whatever i paid for it.
So far I have 5 people here who want a book, and I will order on sunday, and hopefully it will be 6 books by then. So, thank you, and thanks Molly! =)
Dude sweet! I got it right away from peach presss. It is a super informative book. Lots of color and insight to the workings of some of the greatest themes in that site.. I wish I would have gotten my design in now :( :D
After much anticipation, my copy arrived in the mail today! I’m really impressed with the layout (the book itself is beautiful), and from what I’ve read so far, this book is going to be on my desktop for a long time. Congratulations, and thanks for all your efforts!
Just ordered mine yesterday, looking forward to it!
I cant wait to get my grubby little hands on this book! Im actually really excited to get this in the mail and spend some late nights digesting every little bit of print from it.
wheewww!
Amazon UK is now shipping the book.
Mine was shipped 4 hours ago (ordered months ago). I can only assume they’ll be shipping all of the others out now too :)
Looking forward to the book, thanks! :)
Ordered the book yesterday - was finally available on chapters.ca!
It just got here today. Thank you so much, the book is beautiful.
My copy arrived in the post yesterday - it’s fantastic - thanks soooo much. Pierre
Mine shipped march 15; it landed in my mailbox a good week later.
Been reading quite a bit during easter; I’m roughly half-way and loving it! Very pretty and informative.
Beautiful, instructional, and inspirational… This should probably be the second or third CSS book you buy once you buy a tutorial and/or a reference guide.