My five favourite web design and development books

Posted in on 19 February 2012 | Comments

Recently, @MikeStreety wrote a blog post called My Favourite 5 Books, started a #bookstobuy hashtag on Twitter, and suggested that a few other folks could write blog posts with a similar theme. Here’s my contribution to that.

I found it quite difficult choose only five from my bookshelf so I’ve chosen five books that I found easy to read. My concentration span for reading seems a lot less these days so if I find a book easy to read, that’s quite a compliment! Anyway, without further ado, here are my #bookstobuy book suggestions.

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Web design books for Christmas reading

Posted in on 3 December 2010 | Comments

At this time of year, I normally pick out some web design books that I want to read over the Christmas holidays. I’m spoilt for choice this year because three fantastic CSS books have been published recently – or are about to be published. I’ve ordered two of these myself and I’m on the mailing list for the third one! In no particular order, here they are:

  • Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke describes the latest CSS3 and HTML5 methods and it’s a book that I’m looking forward to seeing because the production values and content promise to be the very best. The book is published by the independent UK-based publisher Five Simple Steps which means that the paperback certainly ain’t cheap. However, I think it will be worth it! There’s also a PDF version as well if that’s what you prefer.
  • CSS3 For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm covers CSS3 methods from advanced selectors to generated content to web fonts, gradients, shadows, and rounded corners to animations. I hope this book will give me a push to use some different methods in my own work.
  • Stunning CSS3: A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS by Zoe Mickley Gillenwater covers a similar subject but works through a series of practical examples. This is a great way of learning! I really enjoyed the author’s previous book, Flexible Web Design so Stunning CSS3 should be a great follow-up.

After reading these, I really will be up to speed with the latest CSS and web design methods!

Introducing HTML5

Posted in on 3 August 2010 | Comments

Introducing HTML5 HTML5 is quite a hot topic at the moment and it’s likely that you will be developing websites with this new version of HTML within a few years (if not sooner). HTML5 gives web developers a whole range of new capabilities that will change the way you build websites.

Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp is ideal if you are new to HTML5. It’s a practical book and if you want to learn about and develop with HTML5, I don’t think you will be disappointed. So far, I have only read the first few chapters but I’ve already learnt a lot. For example, you can build websites with HTML5 right now, you can have multiple <footer> elements in a web page, and the difference between <article> and <section>.

Even if HTML5 is not on your top priority list and you are happy with the current versions of (X)HTML, I still think you should put aside some time to get acquainted with HTML5. This book will help you do that.

Buy the book: Amazon UK and Amazon USA

Getting started with information architecture

Posted in on 9 June 2010 | Comments

A Practical Guide to Information Architecture If you have developed websites for some time, you have probably organised the website navigation and content as sensibly as you can for your potential website visitors and to satisfy the website’s objectives. That’s great but in my own experience there have also been examples where I have struggled to organise everything in a way that I was 100% happy with. That’s why I decided to learn some more about Information Architecture (IA).

A Practical Guide to Information Architecture by Donna Spencer is the first book I have bought on the subject. It’s a book for web developers and designers without much Information Architecture knowledge. That’ll be me then.

The book is organised into five sections, each with five chapters, and it starts with a section introducing Information Architecture, moving on to sections about understanding people and content and subsequently designing IA and website navigation. So far it has been easy to read and I hope to post a review when I have finished.

Whether it’s organising content, providing clear descriptions or ways for people to get to them, this book is armed with practical advice and examples.

Microformats Made Simple

Posted in on 20 April 2010 by Clive Walker

Website: http://microformatsmadesimple.com/

Microformats Made Simple aims to teach you about microformats, what they are, the benefits of usage, and how they can be used in your website (X)HTML. The book starts with an introduction that includes a description of the history of microformats and their design patterns. Subsequently, each of the main microformats, and several draft microformats, are explained in their own chapters. Each section describes the advantages of using the microformat, its properties and syntax, the mark-up you might use, and how the microformat is applied to several (X)HTML examples. The book is clearly written in a conversational tone and it’s ideal if you are new to microfomats or even if you have dabbled with them (like me). After reading the book, I feel that I am much better equipped to identify and publish microformatted data in my websites.

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