Recommended books for web designers and developers

About Face 2.0 - "The Essentials of Interaction Design"

By Alan Cooper, Robert M. Reimann

Level Introductory through Advanced

This is required reading for anyone who's interested in interaction design, goal-oriented design, and the design of user interfaces. It's written by Alan Cooper, a hero of mine and founder of the discipline of interaction design, and Rob Reimann, another expert communicator who worked with Alan at Cooper Interaction Design.

About Face 2.0 is the second major edition of the seminal text on how to create clear and usable software. Its principles and examples apply to web pages and applications as much as desktop apps.

This book will give you a thorough grounding in all aspects of interaction design, from the basic discipline of approaching the problem, through goal-oriented techniques and right up to designing the user interface. That's not to say it's a difficult book: it's extremely well written and easy to consume. I cannot recommend it enough.

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Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML and CSS

By Jon Duckett

Level Introductory

A big book, which you can use as a good basic introduction to HTML and CSS, and later as a reference.

Definitely a recommended starting point if you prefer to work from a book.

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Design Basics Index

By Jim Krause

Level Introductory

With this latest addition to his popular Index series, Jim Krause covers all the basics--everything from typography and color to layout and business issues. Design Basics Index is packed with timeless content graphic designers will turn to again and again.

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DHTML Utopia - Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM

By Stuart Langridge

Level Intermediate > Advanced

One of the most useful and well-written technical books I've ever read!

Stuart Langridge takes you through the principles and potential of DHTML from basics, and develops the principles to a fairly advanced level through a series of useful worked examples.

This book moves at a good fast pace, so you need to be familiar with JavaScript and HTML documents first. Highly recommended.

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Don't Make Me Think, 2nd edition

By Steve Krug

Level Introductory

This is the one must-read usability book for all web designer and developers.

Steve Krug's masterpice (now in its second edition) achieves the amazing feat of making very complex concepts simple enough for anyone to understand.

It's a very easy, lighthearted and quick read, thanks to great writing, smart page design and lots of pictures.

The second edition has several worthwhile additions over the classic original book, with 3 new chapters covering important stuff like accessibility.

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Simply Brilliant: the Competitive Advantage of Common Sense: The Bestselling Guide to Getting Things Done

By Fergus O'Connell

Level Introductory

This is a unique book, which essentially gives you the core concepts of project management in easy-to-understand from.

What comes out is a stark understanding of how to make things happen and do it right, with less confusion, greater confidence, and less margin for error.

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Web Style Guide (2nd edition)

By Patrick J. Lynch, Sarah Horton

Level Introductory

In my opinion, the nearest book to Web Design from Scratch. Web Style Guide broadly covers the essntials of graphic design and information architecture for the web.

Recommended to everyone who's ever asked me for this web site in a downloadable form, and everyone starting out in the web industry (in any capacity).

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