All over the web, there are tons of resources and information for anyone to start learning how to make their own websites. As interactive as some of these resources may be, sometimes having a book to guide you through the ins and outs of web design is preferred. Coding books don’t have to be boring or bland either. In this post I’ve handpicked what I believe are the most essential and visually pleasing books to help you learn web design and development. These books are good for beginners and seasoned experts alike. Not to mention, they make great gifts too.
Top 5 Essential Web Design Books
HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett
This book is my absolute favorite for learning HTML & CSS. It is one of the most visually pleasing HTML & CSS books. The nice diagrams do not detract from the informative content at all, but rather enhance it.
I recommend this book for total beginners wanting to get started with creating web sites. It’s also good for seasoned designers that would like a reference book to look back on.
Check it out on Amazon!
JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development by Jon Duckett
After learning how to create a basic website, it is necessary to learn how to make them interactive. Static websites are fine for displaying information but creating an interactive web site and web applications is where things get really interesting.
I recommend this book to everyone that already has experience building a basic website. This book will open up a whole new chapter for web development and help you craft experiences for the web.
Check it out on Amazon.
Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics (4th Edition) by Jennifer Robbins
This book is for beginners that want to learn how to use the latest web design techniques, best practices (responsive/mobile design), and current web standards (HTML5 & CSS3).
What’s different about this book is that at the end of the chapters there are exercises and quizzes that encourage you to apply what you have learned.
I recommend this book for anyone wanting to get started with learning web design.
Check it out on Amazon.
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) by Steve Krug
This book teaches all about usability and how to craft good user experiences. This is very important for web designers as our aim is to keep users and not frustrate them when designing a web site.
Read this book if you want to create easy to use, visually pleasing websites that users keep coming back to!
Check it out on Amazon.
CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems by Lea Verou
Lea Verou is a CSS expert in her own right. In this book she demonstrates various techniques and tips to help intermediate-to advanced CSS developers devise elegant solutions to a wide range of everyday web design problems.
Rather than focus on design, CSS Secrets shows you how to solve problems with code.
Check it out on Amazon.
Honorable Mentions
Pocket Guide to Writing SVG by Joni Trythall
Jony Trythall created a free resource for anyone wanting to learn about SVG, a new (and speedy) way of displaying images on the web.
This online book is a good resource for anyone wanting to get started with creating responsive and scalable vector graphics.
Check out her FREE online book here.
Practical SVG by Chris Coyier
Chris Coyier, the creator of CSS-Tricks.com and codepen.io, wrote a book all about SVG. This book is for front end web designers and developers wanting to implement SVG. Even going into how to animate SVG.
Check it out on A Book Apart.
More Resources
Stack Overflow is filled with thousands of questions and answers, and many of those are book recommendations from programmers with many different levels of skill. Dev-Books collects together the most recommended books. This obviously isn’t the end-all of book recommendations, but it’s certainly a good place to start if you’re just getting into coding or looking to beef up your knowledge.
Your favorites?
What are your favorite web design books or resources?
Suggestions are welcome! Comment below so I can go check them out and perhaps add them to the list.