List of Recommended Web Design and Development Books

[justinOrel]

I'm a big fan of learning through books, so I will share with you some of my recommended titles on web development.

I will update this list periodically.


Web design theory
The Priciples of Beautiful Web Design - This book will teach you all the basic theory of design, in relation to web design. You'll learn how to lay solid foundations to a website, that will allow you to create 'sound' designs, way before you even think about how it is going to look.

HTML
HTML 4 For The World Wide Web - This book was one of the first I bought on the subject, over 8 years ago now! It covered the basics of HTML, and after about a week I was confident at writing up, and understanding, my very own website from scratch. I'm not sure this book is being published any more, so you might need to find something similar.

CSS
I taught myself CSS from practice, tutorials and articles online, but I have, and highly recommend the following CSS reference book: The Ultimate CSS Reference

Javascript
Javascript - The Definitive Guide - The book on Javascript. It covers absolutely everything you could possibly want to know, and it is heavy to boot!

Javascript Phrasebook - Tiny book, packed full of snippets of code for various problems.

PHP/MySQL
PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites - This was my first book on PHP, and it lays the groundwork for you to create some simple scripts, using databases.

PHP & MySQL Bible - Extremely thick book, covers most of PHP. Is a great reference book.

PHP Cookbook - Packed to the brim with excellent and useful snippets of code, for common coding problems. I constantly find myself going back to this book for advice.

PHP Phrasebook - Tiny little book, full of snippets of code. It's a great thing to keep at arms reach.

MySQL Phrasebook - Same as above, but covering MySQL.

PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice - This is quite a complex and laborious read, but it will help you step into more advanced coding practices, such as Object Oriented Programming (OOP), and Patterns.

Web development practices
Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion - This is a must if you want to get serious with web development. Version control is basically a history of everything you've done, which allows you to revert back to things you've done in the past, which in turn acts as a great backup tool. Think Apple Time Machine, but for text/programming files.


I could recommend a tonne more; my bookshelf actually fell off once because of the amount of web development books! What I've suggested here will be more than adequate for beginning, though.