I am wanting to improve my css and get up to date with css so what would be the best book or resource to use, i would prefer a book that i can refer to on my desk rather than a site. I saw this one on amazon what do you think ? any good
I agree with frankcow... there are plenty of resources online. however if you are still after a book, sitepoint has just released a new book on CSS this month here
Books are really awesome to learn from, because the resources are centralised and teaches important subjects that you wouldn't know to look for before. That one looks like a good one, or CSS mastery. For html, I'd highly recommend: http://www.amazon.co.uk/HTML-Master...1493256?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180490873&sr=1-2 Very upto date and teaches you plenty of advanced techniques and in-depth technical knowledge! It's a perfect partner to a good CSS book.
Get "Beginning CSS Development" by Simon Collison. If you want to go the "free" / online way (*cough* without downloading pirated material such as ebooks) you could go to http://www.htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/ - for the basics http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/ - lists http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FrontPage - all sorts of useful links for everything : layouts, hacks, tips and tricks, learning, testing, etc I would not recommend W3Schools. It is heavily outdated, and the code of the site itself is horrible. Many people get W3 confused with W3Schools, they are not the same. When you reach a certain level, you should try to read the W3 specifications instead, since these are directly from the W3 who created CSS.
Sitepoint also has some wonderful books on HTML and CSS you may be interested in. In fact, they just published a new one not too long ago.
Here, this should give you everything you need: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/09/02/list-of-css-tools/