Recommended Books
I own each of the books below and can thoroughly recommend them, go on - spoil yourself…
- Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
- Web Redesign: Workflow That Works by Kelly Goto
- Eric Meyer on CSS
- More Eric Meyer on CSS
- Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
- The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag
- DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith
Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
The bible according to "Z", and I have a signed copy *geek alert*
You code. And code. And code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again.
You can get off the merry-go-round.
It’s time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it’s time for forward compatibility.
Isn’t it high time you started designing with web standards?
Standards aren’t about leaving users behind or adhering to inflexible rules. Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today. You can’t afford to design tomorrow’s sites with yesterday’s piecemeal methods.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
Web Redesign: Workflow That Works by Kelly Goto
Whether you are a designer, a site producer, an in-house webmaster or a company owner trying to move your web presence to the next level, this book is for you. If you’ve ever lived through a redesign that was fraught with confusion, mixed messages, and ever-changing parameters, you’ll want this book at your fingertips. Why? Because Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler present you with the framework for a cohesive web workflow plan that will help you save time, money and headaches. The web is ever-changing; this Core Process applies to all design and redesign projects from the simplest to the most complex. Contributing experts include Jakob Nielsen, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jeffrey Veen and many more…
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
Eric Meyer on CSS
A great book that I loan out to the developers and designers in the office when they first ask me about Cascading Style Sheets.
If you’ve ever wondered how to use CSS in today’s browsers to achieve working, interesting and even artistic effects, this book is for you!
Eric A. Meyer, regarded by many as the most experienced and innovative CSS master working today, pairs his knowledge of CSS, HTML and browser capabilities with a carefully developed hands-on learning method to provide you with 13 full-color projects so that you can learn through example rather than theory. Each project is cross-browser compatible in modern browsers and provides you with numerous opportunities to experiment with the concepts presented.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
More Eric Meyer on CSS
The second in the series from Eric Meyer, the "Red Book" is for my graduates from the "Blue Book" as we call it here.
Ready to commit to using more CSS on your sites? If you are a hands-on learner who has been toying with CSS and want to experiment with real-world projects that will enable you to see how CSS can help resolve design issues, this book is written just for you! CSS master Eric A. Meyer has picked up where Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design left off. He has compiled 10 new, highly useful projects designed to encourage you to incorporate CSS into your sites and take advantage of the design flexibility, increased accessibility, decreased page weight, and cool visual effects CSS offers.
Each project is laid out in an easy-to-follow, full color format complete with notes, warnings, and sidebars to help you learn through example rather than theory.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
Fantastic book! There’s something for everyone inside, I’ve already learnt a thing or two myself.
No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a web site may be, if it’s not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn’t really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Design, author and web designer Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability and user control - key components of every successful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site - one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach - which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. he then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag
The book of the website! Don’t think you can buy T-shirts yet though. A fantastic reference that explores the creativity of various design submissions to the CSS Zen Garden. This isn’t necessarily a book to learn CSS per se from, but it’s informative and very inspirational. Anyone who thinks CSS design means boring and minimalistic should visit the website and buy this book.
Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites. By using the Zen Garden sites as examples of how CSS design techniques and approaches can be applied to specific Web challenges, authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag provide an eye-opening look at the range of design methods made possible by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By the time you’ve finished perusing the volume, you’ll have a new understanding of the graphically rich, fully accessible sites that CSS design facilitates. In sections on design, layout, imagery, typography, effects, and themes, Dave and Molly take you through every phase of the design process–from striking a sensible balance between text and graphics to creating eye-popping special effects (no scripting required).
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith
I’ve bought a few JavaScript books in the distant past but I just couldn’t get my head around it so I consigned myself to either lifting it from a resource website or avoid the problem altogether. This book however is another kettle of fish. I found the concept of the Document Object Model easy to understand - especially with strong Cascading Style Sheet experience behind me and Jeremy explains how to write JavaScript to manipulate the model in a very easy to understand way. All that’s left now is for me to recognise where I can responsibly apply this long sought after knowledge.
You might have heard of the Document Object Model. You will almost certainly have heard of JavaScript. This book explains exactly what these technologies are, where they came from and what they can do for you.
You don’t need to be a programmer to understand DOM Scripting. In fact, this book is aimed specifically at web designers. Programming concepts are illustrated with easy-to-follow tutorials to teach you the ropes of JavaScript and the DOM as painlessly as possible. You will build practical, real-world examples that you can use on your websites. But this book is more than just a collection of useful scripts: it also examines best practices. JavaScript and the Document Object Model are two very powerful technologies that go together like peanut butter and jelly, but if they aren’t used with forethought, the results could be messy. The examples given here will encourage you to think about DOM Scripting in a responsible, user-centric way.
If you’re already using web standards like CSS and XHTML, you’ll appreciate the enhancements that DOM Scripting can offer. Just as CSS allows you to keep your presentation separate from your structure, you can use unobtrusive JavaScript to add dynamic behavior to your web pages without messing with your markup or sacrificing usability. This book is your indispensable guide.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.jp
