- Above the Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site De
- Adapting to Web Standards
- Art of Non-Conformity
- Art of Readable Code
- Art of SEO
- Back to the User
- Beginning PHP6, Apache, MySQL Web Development
- Book Notes
- Books to Read
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- Complete E-Commerce Book
- Content Inc
- Core PHP Programming
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- CSS Text
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- Deliver First Class Web sites
- Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty
- Designing Web Interfaces
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- Designing with Progressive Enhancement
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- Developing with Web Standards
- Economics of Software Quality
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- Epic Content Marketing
- Extending Bootstrap
- Foundation Version Control for Web Developers
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- HACKING EXPOSED WEB APPLICATIONS, 3rd Edition
- Hacking Web Apps
- Happiness At Work
- Implementing Responsive Design
- Inmates Are Running the Asylum
- Instant LESS CSS Preprocessor How-to
- jQuery Pocket Reference
- Letting Go of the Words
- Lost and Found: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
- Making Every Meeting Matter
- Manage Your Day to Day
- Marketing to Millenials
- Mobile First
- Monster Loyalty
- More Eric Meye on CSS
- Official Ubuntu Book
- Organized Home
- Pay Me… Or Else!
- Perennial Seller
- Pet Food Nation
- PHP 5 E commerce Development
- PHP In a NutShell
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- Preventing Web Attacks with Apache
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- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business
- Responsive Web Design with HTML and CSS3
- Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3
- Rules of Thumb
- Saleable Software
- Search Engine Optimization Secrets
- Securing PHP Web Applications
- Serving Online Customers
- Simple and Usable Web, Mobile and Interaction Design
- Smart Organizing
- Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences
- Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
- Talent is Not Enough
- The 10x Rule
- The Benefits of Working with Git In Your Software Projects
- The Clean Coder
- The Herbal Handbook for Home & Health
- The Life-changing Magic of Tidying up
- The Modern Web
- Think First
- This Is Marketing
- Traction
- Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition
- Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Cus
- Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide
- Web Word Wizardry
- Web Word Wizardy
- Website Owner’s Manual
- Whats Stopping Me
- Work for Money, Design for Love
- Your Google® Game Plan for Success: Increasing Your Web Presence with
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Reading List for Web Developers
Why a Reading List?
I love reading. I am a researcher at heart so when I set out to define a 'great site', I decided to starting researching. Turns out there are a lot of books and articles and Web sites to read. You have to read books on Web site writing, programming, usability, design, page layout, and lots of other stuff. Since I like to read anything I can get my hands on, I started to read all the books that were currently on a recommendation list.
To truly understand the field of web design and development, you should read some or all of the key books in web development and design.
I recommend the O'Reilly's Online learning platform. With over 40,000 books and videos, I find myself using this site anytime I need to read a tech book. The iOS app works great too!
Why not just use Google?
Clearly then it would make more sense to just search for information on this topic. The web can provide a list of key individuals who have a strong web presence in the field. The web presence (by presence I mean their Web site, any RSS feeds, online articles, listservers, etc) of these key individuals is vast.
But the internet is a vast place and without a clear map or road guide you can easily loose focus. There is lots of material to follow but you have to work hard to stay on top.
Oddly enough, in practice the internet itself falls short of providing a true understanding of web design and development because it is the web. The constant change provides doubt; suggests that perhaps that Web site might not be there tomorrow. What if someone updates something?
A book once published is more permanent. Web sites are more fluid with updates taking only moments and at little cost.
Books are Road Maps
The books are the road map because all you have to do is lookup the list of authors using your favourite search engine.
Best of all, the books also provide a snapshot. The words are frozen and unchanging in a book. Since the web is constantly evolving, web design and development is in a constant state of flux. Books are a window into the past because the demonstrate key techniques, illustrate past ideas, and show us how the internet was made.
Knowledge and experience over the last decade or more has taught us the value of Web standards. Guidelines and best practices have emerged amidst the change.
Code
- Knowledge Wants To Be Free
- Accidental Creative
- Accidental Genius
- Art of Readable Code
- Art of the Start
- The Art of Readable Code by Dustin Boswell
- The Clean Coder
- Creativity: the Perfect Crime
- Designing with Progressive Enhancement
- Deep Sites
- Designing with Web Standards
- Developing with Web Standards by John Allsopp
- Eat That Frog
- Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau
- Healthy Programmer
- PHP and MySQL Web Development
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
- Philosophical Programmer
- ReWork
- Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte
- Securing PHP Web Applications
- Scalability Rules
- Talent is Overrated
Design
- 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People by Susan Weinschenk
- CSS Web Site Design
- CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems by Lea Verou
- Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty by David Kadavy
- Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us Into Temptation by Chris Nodder
- More Eric Meyer on CSS
- Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences by Stephen Anderson
- The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
- The Zen of CSS Design
- Transcending CSS
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
- Web Design in a Nutshell
- Web ReDesign 2.0
UI & UX
- Art of Interactive Design
- Back to the User
- Communicating Design
- Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points
- Design Web Sites That Work
- Elements of User Experience
- Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability by Caroline Jarrett
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
- Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites That Work
- User Interface Design for Programmers
- Web Site Usability
Content
Software Development
- Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown
- Submit Now
- The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology by Golden Krishna
- Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr
- Don't Make Me Think
- Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
- I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains by Chuck Klosterman
- Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
- Think First
- The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience
- Why Software Sucks by David Platt
- Web Application Hacker's Handbook
Why Read Books?
Reading books shows there are also common practices or guidelines in the field. These guidelines exist for a reason, they were created out the chaos of the past decade or more of web design and development. These guidelines that provide a framework around which we develop Web sites.
I am still adding to the list but I want to make sure I have read the material and would recommend the item first before I include them.
Sources
These recommendation lists proved hard to find. Here are other people's lists of books to read.
- Go to Bed Smarter
- What is the single most influential book every programmer should read? - Stack Overflow
- 10 Articles Every Programmer Must Read
- Recommended Reading | The Homepage of @attrc
- Coding for Interviews
- 25 Must Buy Borrow or Steal Books for Web Designers
- Usability and Interface Design Books
- Software Engineering Reading List
- Suggested Readings in HCI, UI Development and HF
- Coding Horror: Recommended Reading for Developers
- Book Reviews by Joel Spolsky
- nettus Approved Web Development Books
- Books For Learning to Design, The Hard Way
- Prof. Sussman's Reading List
- A Comprehensive Reading List for and by Designers
Just to let you know, this page was last updated Saturday, Nov 09 24