lewro’s blog - 2.1 - web designer beginner

Books I read

You can find the list of the books I read and my comments.

Here is my whish list on amazon.com

Zen of CSS design

• Author: Dave Shea
• Description: This book is the real example how I think the book about web design should look like. It is beautifully design in full colour and superb images. Dave presents lots of successful sites from css zen garden gallery. He shows us how they have been build, what kind of techniques and tricks have been used. He guides us true the core of the web design. Chapters called Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects are self-explanatory. The book is not just for your brain it touches your visual senses.

The CSS Anthology

• Author: Rachel Andrew
• Description: You will find in this book everything from text styling, images positioning & replacement, navigation, styling of tabular data, forms, different layout types and techniques up to browsers and devices support. You can find here information about the way professional developers produce their sites. The actual workflow and tools they use. The book answers more then 100 very important questions which we ask ourselves on daily basis.

The Javascript Anthology

• Authors: Cameron Adams, James Edwards
• Description: These two guys explaining the new java-script (JS) with all its possibilities and cool features. This book will make people think a lot different about JS that they did before. It shows that except incorrect usage of JS in the past like unwanted pop-ups and scrolling text in the status bar there is plenty you can do with this exciting technology. Validation scripts, working with cookies, date&time, images. Even some cooler things like changing CSS with JS, Ajax, Implementing drag and drop behaviour.

Designing with web standards 2^nd editions

• Author: Jeffrey Zieldman
• Description: The second edition of the most popular book in web design industry comes with the updated information which were covered in the first edition. The new version comes in full colour and lots of new information. Specially chapter 4 where Jeffrey writes about Syndication, Blogs, Podcasts, Ajax, WYSIWYG Tools. You will find in this book lots about web standards and accessibility, 2 areas Jeffrey is famous for the most.

Beginning CSS Web Development

• Author: Simon Collison
• Description: Colly explains in his book the whole CSS concept with all the actual tips and tricks. He also covers the new way how to deal with browser bugs, how to handle css structure and comments in your code. He does not miss the accessibility guidelines, dealing with colours, image formats, layout techincs. I would highly recommend this book for all beginners.

Blog Design Solutions

• Authors: Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Chris J.Davis, Michael Heilemann, John Oxton, David Powers, Richard Rutter, Phil Sherry
• Description: If you are thinking about creating your own blog you should definitely start here! This book gives you the whole overview of the blog concept. It will answer all your questions - What is blog? - How does it work? - What do I need for it? - What is RSS? - How can I install it? It will guide you true the installation of local test environment - appache, php, mysql. It includes description of variety of blog engines like: Wordpress, Expression Engine, Movable Type and explain you each one in enough deep way to get started as soon as possible.

DOM Scripting

• Author: Jeremy Keith
• Description: This is book is definitely not for beginners like me but I have bought it anyway because I am really interested in technology which results you can see on most popular sites these days. Jeremy Keith shows the new way how to use Java-script which degrades gracefully. What does it mean? It runs only in browsers which knows how to run it. It is used for special features and effects so if the user's browser does not support DOM then she can still access the content. So accessibility, accessibility, accessibility - the future of web. You can find here most of the ready made scripts which you can use on your web sites. Among the most interesting parts belongs: creating markup on the fly, using Java-script for modifying CSS.

Designing with web standards 1^st edition

• Author: Jefrey Zieldman
• Description: Jefrey Zieldman provides complete history of web design development including developments of internet browsers and theirs bugs. The book is extremely useful for newcomers. It gives you the overview you could hardly find anywhere else even talking to hundreds of web designers for months. The book does not provide only trip to history it shows how to create web pages with actual techniques (xhtml, css, DOM) using the web standards. This book was a reason for major changes in web design market. It influence producers of web browsers, html editing tools and obviously thousands of web designers around the world.

CSS Mastery

• Authors: Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, Simon Collison
• Description: This book is ideal source of information for designers with mediate knowledge of CSS. It is even very useful for beginners like me. You will find here all the necessary information about box model, recommended CSS techniques, hacks and filters. It will teach you how to structure your CSS dividing them into: layout, typography, colour. How to structure your CSS code including comment types like: TODO, KLUDGE, BUG. It also explains: clearing, how to code tables, forms and how to deal with browser bugs.