November 17, 2003 | View Comments (20) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: What are some good design and programming books?
I was going through Amazon yesterday looking at some design books and reading reviews. I definitely do not have enough design books in my arsenal so my next project is to build a quality design/programming library. I would like to hear what books you recommend for either design or programming. My must-haves include:
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I just finished reading "Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web" and I'd highly recommend it. It'd make a good pair with Don't Make Me Think; they have a similarly personable and accessible style.
Speaking of which, I love Joe Clark's Web accessibility book - http://joeclark.org/book/ - both for the level of detail and for the overall philosopy of accessibility.
Personally, I'm looking for a good PHP book, something to inspire me when I'm stuck or trying something new.
Elaine (http://www.epersonae.com)
Anything by Wrox, which is sadly no longer in existence. At least, any of the PHP ones, I don't have experience with much else from them except an XML and XSLT reference book.
If you're just starting with PHP with nothing more than a little programming background, (which of course you aren't, but someone might be) PHP Essentials by Julie Meloni (thickbook.com) is perfect (that's the book that helped me break away from plain HTML and a little SSI and perl and embrace the yummy goodness that is server-side HTML embedded scripting). She's an entertaining writer, fun to read, and I learned enough from it to get started.
XSLT second edition programmers reference is saving my butt on this XSL stuff I'm doing, but it doesn't make for entertaining reading.
Sam's Teach Yourself Java 2 Platform in 21 days... I haven't read that, a coworker is reading it, but he occasionally brings it over because the writer had a good sense of humor and hid lots of little things in the book... for example, he uses "8765309" for the seed number for a randomizing function.
O'Reilly's Webmaster in a Nutshell is a pretty good overview of several things, though it's a bit old unless they've revamped it, I think I bought my copy in 2000. IIRC it covered HTTP protocol, some basic TCP/IP, Networking, and Security as well as a really confusing explanation of PHP and a few other things. The HTTP protocol and stuff about how servers work and how to set up a server depending on what you want to use it for was very useful.
For a great general knowledge book, get a study guide for the i-net+ test. Hopefully yours will be more up-to-date than mine is... even though mine was new last year, it was a second or third edition and some things didn't get edited. Amazing how much stuff there was about token ring networks.
Hmm. that's it for now. I don't have my library here at the office,a nd most of our office books deal with technologies we've abandoned. heh.
If you can find a good CSS book, be sure to post it, I've never been able to find one that covered all the stuff I want to learn.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
"The Pragmatic Programmer" is the best technical book that I've read. It is not specific to any technologies or languages, but rather is simply teaches you some programming best practices. It is the only book that changed the way I think about and design software.
As for books on visual design, I'd also be interested in hearing some suggestions. I have this book on my Amazon wishlist - it's not so much specific to computer-based designs, but visual designs in general:
Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0133033899/ref=cm_wl_ovu-pg.1-pos.3/002-2807347-2647206?v=glance&coliid=I27MK9PUE8PZGB&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER)
Sorry for the long URL - I couldn't figure out how to link the title.
Jason Long
I have that same Wrox XSLT book, JC, and my copy is full of yellow stickies, which to my way of thinking is one sign of an excellent reference book. (tho, as you say, it doesn't make for the most exciting reading.)
I thought I read someplace that Wrox's "assets" got bought by another publisher, but I don't remember who, alas.
Elaine (http://www.epersonae.com)
Ahhh, Jason you broke it!!!!! Will have to fix that monstrosity of a hyperlink somehow. Oh well at least you have to scroll down to see it :)
JC: Elain is right in that wrox did get bought out by someone. The site is back up http://www.wrox.com.
An awesome ASP.net for advanced programmers is ASP.Net Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution. Highly recommended, but not for beginners.
For MySQL stuff the New Riders book "MySQL" by Dubois is the bible.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
For development, I've had good luck with O'Reilly books.
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
- JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
- Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide
- HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide
For ASP, I'm using Wrox's "Professional Active Server Pages 3.0".
For SQL (using SQL Server 2000), I pretty much stick with Books Online, which comes with it. A year and a half with a startup taught me Books Online was my friend. :)
I enjoyed both "Don't Make Me Think" and Zeldman's "Designing with Web Standards", and I should probably re-read them.
Neilsen's "Designing Web Usability" is a bit overblown -- I'd definitely recommend Krug over it.
I'm hoping to find some good suggestions here for design books, so I'll be back. Not just "web design", but other graphic design too.
flexiblefine
'Neilsen's "Designing Web Usability" is a bit overblown -- I'd definitely recommend Krug over it.'
What... you weren't won over by the lovely design? Neon Green, all the way!
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
and re: Wrox... that's great! They made good books. At least, for the stuff I need them for. Apparently they didnt have such a good name in some quarters... all depends on the writers behind the book, I suppose.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I just finished 'The elements of graphic design'. Excelent book on design. But i guess you've already read it, it's all about whitespace.
andrej (http://andrej.racchvs.com)
Two really good books that fit in the design category are
"The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst and
"Stop Stealing Sheep" by Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger.
An excellent book on CSS that nobody has mentioned yet is Eric Meyer's "Eric Meyer on CSS".
And "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug is probably the best book on usability that I have read.
Roger Johansson (http://www.456bereastreet.com)
OK... I put in a request with my boss for "Don't Make Me Think","Eric Meyer on CSS", and "Designing With Web Standards" (Zeldman). We'll see how that goes over
Interesting, I'm home now and I can't find any of my wrox books... I must have taken them down last time I was working on soemthing hard and not put them back. Which means they're buried somewhere now. Ah well.
I also have the PHP4 bible, the PHP developer's cookbook, which I found quite useful for some things, visual age for java (blech), the ever-so-creatively named "MySQL/PHP Database Applications", a bunch of oreilly nutshell books for linux, unix, perl, and so on, a book called "Killer Content" which I don't think I ever finished because it was kinda boring, and mostly common sense... web page wizardry, which sucks ass but had a lot of interesting stuff about all the latest and greatest multimedia technologies back in the mid to late 90s (pre-flash I think, or maybe flash2)... couple books on setting up and configuring linux servers, and the internet law handbook.
And the illustrated kama sutra... how the heck did that get in there? heh. just kidding.
My number 1 and 2 development references, though, are the wonderful PHP help file and the CF help built into CF studio... which is actually the only reason I even open CF studio anymore since dreamweaver MX outdoes it in everything except the code references... MX *has* code reference, but only for tags, not functions, and they're poorly formatted.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It's a little dated, and maybe a quarter too long, but a powerful introduction to design as a process regardless.
Brian (http://joechip.net/brian/)
Yeah I have been thinking about get the Design of Everyday Things. Looks like I definitely have to now.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Lots of repetition but here's what I've liked:
Information Design;
Edward Tufte:
- Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Envisioning Information
- Visual Explanations
[He writes about statistics, but these books are more than that. Highly recommended]
HTML/CSS;
Zeldman - DWWS
Meyer - Eric Meyer on CSS
[He's apparently mostly done on a revision to the O'Reilly CSS: Definitive Guide]
Lie & Bos - CSS
[good general reference]
Usability;
Krug - Don't Make Me Think
Neilsen - Designing Web Usability
Perl;
Schwartz & Phoenix (O'Reilly) - Learning Perl
[I wish I could find similar quality 'beginner' books for all geek subjects, eg Unix/Regex/Apache]
PHP;
Kevin Yank (Sitepoint.com) - Build Your Own Database Driven Website (PHP & MySQL)
[4 chapters free on the site]
Typography;
Bringhurst - Elements of Typographic Style
You can often read preview chapters of O'Reilly books.
Philip Greenspun has some good stuff too:
http://philip.greenspun.com/books/
Hope that's of some use. More info on request
oli (http://oli.boblet.net/)
I don't actually own a single book on web design. Occasionally I photocopy a few pages from books I borrow from the library and save articles from the web.
I never read the 3 books I bought on Photoshop when learning that, occasionally I looked something up, but I could have used the web just as easily.
A web design book is soon out of date. CSS tutorials on the web are better than any books I've seen on the subject.
But one design book that had a great impact on me was Jan Tschichold's "Asymmetric Typography". An excellent work.
Joel (http://biroco.com/journal.htm)
I just bought the Design of Everyday Things and so far it is an excellent book. Opens your eyes to the way we design things.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
My bookshelf seems to be heaving under the weight of my web design books at the moment. I'm continuously impressed by the quality of New Riders books while if you want more techie stuff, O'reily is a good bet.
There is a list of my favourite web design books on my site if you're interested.
http://www.andybudd.com/blog/books.html
As well as a load of books I want to get (recently culled) in my amazon wish list.
Andy Budd (http://www.andybudd.com/blog/)
Yes, The Elements of Typographic Style is a must. Also the Thames & Hudson Manual of Typography. Any book on typographic matters before 1980 is usually better than things being published today. At least that's what I think. New media can always be applied to older work.
Austin (http://www.rainy.net/austin/)
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#1
I don't have any specific recommendations, since the vast majority of my books deal with development, not design... but something about color theory, a good photoshop book, something that covers web graphics.
Maybe Nielsen's book... and of course "web pages that suck"
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)