Here are 62 books that HTML and CSS fans have personally recommended if you like
HTML and CSS.
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I have been designing user interfaces since graduate school at Stanford, where I studied psychology and computer science. Over the five decades since then, I have designed many digital products and services, learning a lot about how to make them usable and useful. Two decades ago, I turned more towards sharing my knowledge and experience through writing (articles and books) and teaching (professionals and students). I’ve taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the University of San Francisco, and at professional conferences and companies. Google invited me twice to speak in their Authors @ Google series, and ACM and SIGCHI have given me several awards.
If you design Web sites, you’ve almost certainly already read Steve’s book; it may be the best-selling Web design book of all time. If not, do.
It succinctly explains most of what designers need to know about Website usability. The title of the book – Don’t Make Me Think – is the book’s main point: “If your website makes me think about how to use it, distracting me from my own goals (e.g., booking a flight), I’m out of here.”
In relatively few pages, Steve explains how to design Websites so visitors need not think about how to use them.
Since Don't Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug's guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it's one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.
Now Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don't Make Me Think a classic-with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it's still short, profusely illustrated...and best of all-fun to read.
I’ve been working with the Web since the 1990s. It’s been fascinating to see the progress and growth of the web design field through the years. As an information technology professional, I’ve held many job roles, including software developer, systems analyst, web designer, web developer, and consultant. I eventually discovered my true calling of teaching information technology and am a Harper College Professor Emeritus. In the early 2000s, I developed the curriculum for the Web Design and Web Development certificate and degree programs at the college. This book is one of the two web development textbooks I wrote to provide my students with lots of hands-on practice while learning new concepts.
Eric Meyer has been a CSS guru since the beginning of time – well, “web” time, anyway! This comprehensive book is for you if you want to get in-depth into the nuts and bolts of CSS. I keep this book on my own desk. It is extremely detailed and informative.
If you're a web designer or app developer interested in sophisticated page styling, improved accessibility, and saving time and effort, this book is for you. This revised edition provides a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of the latest CSS specifications.
CSS is a constantly evolving language for describing the presentation of web content on screen, printers, speech synthesizers, screen readers, and chat windows. It is used by all browsers on all screen sizes on all types of IoT devices, including phones, computers, video games, televisions, watches, kiosks, and auto consoles. Authors Eric Meyer and Estelle…
I’ve been working with the Web since the 1990s. It’s been fascinating to see the progress and growth of the web design field through the years. As an information technology professional, I’ve held many job roles, including software developer, systems analyst, web designer, web developer, and consultant. I eventually discovered my true calling of teaching information technology and am a Harper College Professor Emeritus. In the early 2000s, I developed the curriculum for the Web Design and Web Development certificate and degree programs at the college. This book is one of the two web development textbooks I wrote to provide my students with lots of hands-on practice while learning new concepts.
Rachel Andrew has been a pioneer of the new CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid Layout models. These layout models have revolutionized the way web developers design web pages. It is so much easier to create responsive web pages that look good on many different devices when using new CSS layout techniques. In my opinion, this book is best for a person who has a basic understanding of CSS.
CSS Grid Layout will transform the way you design and develop for the web—and Rachel Andrew will change the way you grok the spec. Learn to use Grid Layout within a system that includes existing methods to perform the tasks they were designed for—and take advantage of this pivotal moment in the evolution of layout. Contents Where We Came From Where We Are The New Layout Alignment Control Responsive by Default Source Order and Display Order Embrace the Future Where Are We Going? About the Author Rachel Andrew lives in Bristol, England. She is the cofounder of edgeofmyseat.com, the web…
In 2012, I escaped my corporate job to found Enchanting Marketing. I had discovered I love writing and I love teaching people how to write even more. I help small business owners and solo flyers find their voice and share their ideas with gusto, so they can captivate, educate, and inspire their audience. I created this list with 5 book recommendations as a mini-course on writing for the web. There’s little overlap between the books; they all complement each other. Happy reading and happy writing!
Content design is about creating content (not just written content but any type of content, including maps, infographics, and images) that best serves users’ needs, and it’s key to getting found and read online.
This short guide in plain English features many examples of how to create content that pulls readers towards a website (rather than just pushing content outwards). I especially like the chapter on the science of reading as well as the chapter on job stories and user stories.
I love how practical this guide is. It’s written by someone who’s clearly been knee-deep in the trenches of content design.
Between 2010 and 2014, Sarah Richards and her team at the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service did what many thought impossible: they took over 400 separate government websites and transformed them into a single site designed to effectively serve its users. In doing so, they defined a new discipline: content design.
Content design isn’t graphic design or just copywriting under another name. Content design focuses on what content best serves the users’ needs, whether it be the written word, infographics, visuals, videos, or charts.
At the core of content design are the needs of the users—and this means determining what…
I have been designing user interfaces since graduate school at Stanford, where I studied psychology and computer science. Over the five decades since then, I have designed many digital products and services, learning a lot about how to make them usable and useful. Two decades ago, I turned more towards sharing my knowledge and experience through writing (articles and books) and teaching (professionals and students). I’ve taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the University of San Francisco, and at professional conferences and companies. Google invited me twice to speak in their Authors @ Google series, and ACM and SIGCHI have given me several awards.
When people browse or search the Web for information, they don’t read; they scan, looking for anything matching their goal. Scan, click, scan, click, etc.
Most web designers include waaay too much text in their sites, slowing people down, frustrating poor readers (which unfortunately is a large percentage of the population). Most text on the Web is simply ignored.
I like Ginny’s book because it does a great job of driving that point home and explaining how to cut the text down to what is necessary. It has become a classic in the UX and Web design fields.
Web site design and development continues to become more sophisticated. An important part of this maturity originates with well-laid-out and well-written content. Ginny Redish is a world-renowned expert on information design and how to produce clear writing in plain language for the web. All of the invaluable information that she shared in the first edition is included with numerous new examples. New information on content strategy for web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media make this once again the only book you need to own to optimize your writing for the web.
I moved into content design from a career in brand and marketing, at a time when the discipline was emerging and not many people really knew what it was. Much of my time since has been spent educating people and organisations and sharing knowledge to help them make better content decisions. Throughout this time, I’ve learnt most of what I know through the experience of working with the design teams, but so many books have also helped me along the way and made my work so much better. I love content design – having the power to improve people's experiences with brands through words is so rewarding, and these books will inspire others to do the same.
Despite this book being a few years old, it’s as valid today for anyone who works in content strategy or design as it was when it was published. In fact, in many ways, I think it was ahead of its time. It features a number of tools and templates for content designers and strategists to strengthen the rigour and process behind their work. I like it because it helps anyone in a content role to think more operationally too, whether that’s putting a value on the content, or prioritising content creation. My copy was given to me for my first content design role, and is full of bookmarked pages I’ve returned to many times since!
In this essential guide, Meghan Casey outlines a step-by-step approach for doing content strategy, from planning and creating your content to delivering and managing it. Armed with this book, you can confidently tackle difficult activities like telling your boss or client what's wrong with their content, getting the budget to do content work, and aligning stakeholders on a common vision. Reading The Content Strategy Toolkit is like having your own personal consulting firm on retainer with a complete array of tools and tips for every challenge you'll face. In this practical and relevant guide, you'll learn how to: Identify problems…
I’ve been dabbling in Python for the last 22 years. I am a regular speaker at Pycon India ever since its inception. Most of my talks are related to Django. I host arunrocks.com where I write tutorials, and articles and publish screencasts on several Django and Python topics. My initial screencast titled "Building a blog in 30 mins with Django" is one of the most popular screencasts for beginners in Django. I’m a developer member of the Django Software Foundation.
This is a very well-written book that covers some less covered areas like how to write the most minimal Django application or integrating with Tornado server. The book is short and quite engaging. This is not exactly a book for an impatient beginner as it takes time to build the concepts. Also, the book might be a bit dated since it was last updated in 2014.
How can you take advantage of the Django framework to integrate complex client-side interactions and real-time features into your web applications? Through a series of rapid application development projects, this hands-on book shows experienced Django developers how to include REST APIs, WebSockets, and client-side MVC frameworks such as Backbone.js into new or existing projects. Learn how to make the most of Django's decoupled design by choosing the components you need to build the lightweight applications you want. Once you finish this book, you'll know how to build single-page applications that respond to interactions in real time. If you're familiar with…
I've been a C# programmer for 23 years, and am passionate about the language. It is the perfect balance of power and ease of use, and each year it is extended by its amazing development team. I've used C# to build stand-alone applications, mobile applications, APIs, and database applications and I've never felt constrained. Finally, C# lends itself to best practices and design patterns, and continues to rise in popularity, especially with professional software developers.
This book not only teaches the language, it puts it into the context of .NET. It is up-to-date and amazingly comprehensive. Don't be intimidated by its size (it is massive); that is a function of all that Mark covers. If you want one book that covers every aspect of C# and .NET, this is the one.
An accessible guide for beginner-to-intermediate programmers to concepts, real-world applications, and latest features of C# 11 and .NET 7, with hands-on exercises using Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code.
Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format.
Key Features
Explore the newest additions to C# 11, the .NET 7 class libraries, and Entity Framework Core 7
Create professional websites and services with ASP.NET Core 7 and Blazor
Build your confidence with step-by-step code examples and tips for best practicesBook Description
Extensively revised to accommodate the latest features that come with C# 11 and…
My first career was as a reporter on daily newspapers. As I got promoted to editing and eventually webmaster jobs, I needed to learn about design. Newspapers had been trying to figure out which designs attract the most readers for a century. The Poynter Institute, founded in 1975, began doing quantitative research as part of its journalism education mission. Seven years later, Gannett, a large newspaper publisher, introduced USA Today, based on the latest graphic and readability research. About the same time, Edward Tufte wrote his seminal book on graphic design (See recommendation #1). With the arrival of the web, companies like Google and Microsoft took the research to new levels. For example, Microsoft used readability research to create Verdana, a font designed to be legible with then-low resolution screens. Of course, the advertising and direct-mail industries had been conducting design research for decades to enhance sales. In short, you can’t pretend to be a competent designer, webmaster, or editor in this day and age without understanding quantitative readability research.
Why are three of the five books I recommend about graphic design written by marketing types? They know that their livelihood depends on effective design. Godin is one of those smarmy marketing types—who else would name a book about web design after a fez?—but he knows his stuff. He argues that website owners shouldn’t take their cues from their IT people, who don’t know nothin’ about sales, customers, and web design. Tufte and Nielsen present the data dispassionately; Godin tells it like it is. This book expands on his legendary essay, “Really Bad PowerPoint,” which you can still find as a free download on the web.
I have been coding for over 30 years. I’ve seen some miserable interfaces, and some large programs that collapse under their own weight. Software was, at one point, notorious for being late, over budget, and unreliable. These books have helped turn the corner on these failings, and I have found each of them very valuable in my day-to-day programming. While you can learn technique and even languages online, the kind of insight found in these books is rare and worth spending time and money on.
There are literally dozens of good books on unit testing, but I highly recommend reading at least one. Unit testing is one of the most important practices that a great many programmers do not do. It isn’t easy, once you get past tiny programs, but it is absolutely essential if you wish to create robust code. Without unit testing you fix one thing over here, and break it over there. With good unit testing you know that your program will be flexible and easily evolved.
Unit Testing: Principles, Patterns and Practices shows you how to refine your existing unit tests by implementing modern best practices. You'll learn to spot which tests are performing, which need refactoring, and which need to be deleted entirely! Upgrade your testing suite with new testing styles, good patterns, and reliable automated testing.
Unit Testing: Principles, Practices and Patterns is a practical guide to modern unit testing best practices. Microsoft MVP Vladimir Khorikov takes you hands-on with examples of the ideal unit test and unit testing practices, building your skills step by step on a solid foundation.
