Everyone knows that in order to create the best websites you need to be up-to-date with the latest trends and developments. We asked experts and long timer designers and developers to share with us their favorite books, and the result is a selection of the very best books that everyone should read. Our list includes 25 books that all developers must read if they want to create great web sites. We cover everything from HTML to CSS, JavaScript and jQuery books.
1. Introducing HTML5
Authors: Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp
Price: $17 Amazon Kindle
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As HTML5 continues to evolve, browsers are implementating at break-neck speed and HTML5 web sites spring up like flowers after rain.Lawson and Sharp’s Introducing HTML5, now in its second edition, helps you get acquainted with the possibilities of HTML5; it also explores the good and the bad within the spec, along with discussing aspects not yet fully implemented in browsers.
2. The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design
Author: Craig Grannel
Price: $23.09
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The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design is a great book, if you need suggestions on how to create great web sites that are standards compliant, usable, and look great, and yet the book isn’t filled with boring and dry theory. No matter at what stage of your design career you, the mixture of practical tutorials and reference material makes this book invaluable to both beginners and more experienced designers.
3. HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
Author: Jon Duckett
Price: $18
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Every day, more and more people want to learn some HTML and CSS. Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach.
4. CSS3 for Web Designers
Author: Dan Cederholm
Price: $18/$9 (paperback/ebook)
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Cederholm’s book aims to show how CSS3 is a “universe of creative possibilities”, providing insight into web fonts, advanced selectors and the many visual enhancements the technology can bring to web pages. Eric Meyer, An Event Apart partner and co-founder, says: “With Dan you know you’re getting great visual design with a fun theme, wrapped around great technical information. This book delivers big time.”
5. Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design
Author: Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte
Price: $29
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Master sophisticated CSS layout methods powered by a philosophy of ‘progressive enrichment’. Create fluid designs that support today’s plethora of connected devices, and learn techniques that create a living, textural look and feel without killing your user’s bandwidth. Dare to innovate fearlessly and gain tips on persuading your clients to accept your innovations.
6. HTML5 & CSS3 For The Real World
Author: Estelle Weyl, Louis Lazaris and Alexis Goldstein
Price: $25
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One of a number of books concentrating on the core of new web technologies, HTML5 & CSS3 is all about creating dynamic websites with new toys. Instead of fluff and hype, it concentrates on fun, effective techniques that you can start using immediately. According to Studholme: “This book manages the impressive task of covering a massive amount of content without being a tome. It’s full of useful insights and real-world advice.”
7. JavaScript Enlightenment
Author: Cody Lindley
Price: $15 (PDF edition)
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This is the book that might transform you from a JavaScript library user into a JavaScript developer. Most of us old-timers learned JavaScript by reading other people’s code and through blind experimentation, so we missed out on a lot of the fundamentals. In this book, Cody does an amazing job walking through the ECMA spec, detailing the intricacies of the JavaScript language.
8. Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS
Author: Jonathan Snook
Price: $15 (Canadian)
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In this book, which started life as a website, Snook outlines the methodology behind SMACSS (pronounced ‘smacks’), a means to examine your design process and fit rigid frameworks into a flexible thought process, thereby resulting in a consistent approach to site development when using CSS.
9. Stunning CSS3
Author: Zoe Gillenwater
Price: $29
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Far too many CSS books are little more than elaborate reference guides, but Gillenwater takes a different approach, helping you learn the power of CSS3 through practical, eye-catching examples. “I don’t think this book has got the promotion and attention it deserves,” says Rewis. “It is sincerely one of the most practical, informative and lovely CSS3 books out there, due to Zoe using a project-based approach throughout to illustrate the concepts.”
10. The Truth About HTML5
Author: Luke Stevens
Price: $20
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As designer and developer Sebastian Green points out, the title of this book shows this is a rather different take on HTML5: “It highlights the myths currently in circulation about the spec and also gives some information about the procedures behind creating it.” Green says the book details how people are using new tags but also shows they may have interpreted the spec incorrectly and headed in the wrong direction. It also explores a groundbreaking semantics initiative, what happens when Flash dies, and how HTML5 alters fundamental components of the web.
11. The Definitive Guide to HTML5
Author: Adam Freeman
Price: $25
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The Definitive Guide to HTML5 provides the breadth of information you’ll need to start creating the next generation of HTML5 websites. It covers all the base knowledge required for standards-compliant, semantic, modern website creation. It also covers the full HTML5 ecosystem and the associated APIs that complement the core HTML5 language.
12. HTML5: The Missing Manual
Author: Matthew MacDonald
Price: $23
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HTML5 is more than a markup language—it’s a dozen independent web standards all rolled into one. Until now, all it’s been missing is a manual. With this thorough, jargon-free guide, you’ll learn how to build web apps that include video tools, dynamic drawings, geolocation, offline web apps, drag-and-drop, and many other features. HTML5 is the future of the Web, and with this book you’ll reach it quickly.
13. Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3
Author: Ben Frain
Price: $40
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Responsive web design, in my opinion, represents huge potential for business web development. It can be so easy to view it as just another buzzword, more marketing jargon if you may but if you take the time to understand what is means for web development, you will see its pretty hot with huge potential. The author moves through a well worked out movie website project to show that Responsive web design is not a huge single monolithic thing but instead a series of existing technologies ( HTML5, CSS3 ) and design techniques ( flexible grid layout, flexible images and media and media queries ).
14. CSS3: The Missing Manual
Author: David Sawyer McFarland
Price:$20
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CSS3 lets you create professional-looking websites, but learning its finer points can be tricky—even for seasoned web developers. This Missing Manual shows you how to take your HTML and CSS skills to the next level, with valuable tips, tricks, and step-by-step instructions. You’ll quickly learn how to build web pages that look great and run fast on devices and screens of all sizes.
15. The Book of CSS3: A Developer’s Guide to the Future of Web Design
Author:Peter Gasston
Price:$21
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CSS3 is the technology behind most of the eye-catching visuals on the Web today, but the official documentation can be dry and hard to follow. Luckily, The Book of CSS3 distills the heady technical language of the CSS3 specification into plain English, so you can get started on your next project right away. With real-world examples and a focus on results, The Book of CSS3 shows you how to transform ordinary text into stunning, richly detailed web pages fit for any browser. You’ll master the latest cutting-edge CSS features, like multi-column layouts, borders and box effects, and new color and opacity settings.
16. Stylin’ with CSS: A Designer’s Guide (Voices That Matter)
Author: Charles Wyke-Smith
Price:$25
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In this completely revised edition of his bestselling Stylin’ with CSS,
veteran designer and programmer Charles Wyke-Smith guides you through
a comprehensive overview of designing Web pages with CSS, including
the advanced capabilities of CSS3 that are now widely implemented
across all the major browsers.
17. Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout
Author:Eric Meyer
Price: $25
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Smashing CSS takes you well beyond the basics, covering not only the finer points of layout and effects, but introduces you to the future with HTML5 and CSS3. Very few in the industry can show you the ins and outs of CSS like Eric Meyer and inside Smashing CSS Eric provides techniques that are thorough, utterly useful, and universally applicable in the real world. From choosing the right tools, to CSS effects and CSS3 techniques with jQuery, Smashing CSS is the practical guide to building modern web layouts.
18. Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics
Author: Jennifer Niederst Robbins
Price: $27
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Do you want to build web pages, but have no previous experience? This friendly guide is the perfect place to start. You’ll begin at square one, learning how the Web and web pages work, and then steadily build from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create a simple site with multi-column pages that adapt for mobile devices.
Learn how to use the latest techniques, best practices, and current web standards—including HTML5 and CSS3. Each chapter provides exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you understand key concepts.
This thoroughly revised edition is ideal for students and professionals of all backgrounds and skill levels, whether you’re a beginner or brushing up on existing skills.
19. JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual
Author: David Sawyer McFarland
Price:
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JavaScript lets you supercharge your HTML with animation, interactivity, and visual effects—but many web designers find the language hard to learn. This jargon-free guide covers JavaScript basics and shows you how to save time and effort with the jQuery library of prewritten JavaScript code. You’ll soon be building web pages that feel and act like desktop programs, without having to do much programming.
20. Learning jQuery
Author:Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg
Price:$40
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Step through each of the core concepts of the jQuery library, building an overall picture of its capabilities. Once you have thoroughly covered the basics, the book returns to each concept to cover more advanced examples and techniques. This book is for web designers who want to create interactive elements for their designs, and for developers who want to create the best user interface for their web applications. Basic JavaScript programming and knowledge of HTML and CSS is required. No knowledge of jQuery is assumed, nor is experience with any other JavaScript libraries.
21. Practical CSS3: Develop and Design
Author: Chris Mills
Price: $21
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This book teaches how to use CSS3 to build cool, responsive user interface features that are feasible for use in real-world projects today. Readers will appreciate the author’s approachable style and will catch on quickly with this easy-to-follow, practical guide. Well known and respected CSS3 expert Chris Mills devotes much of the book to creating fallbacks for older browsers, so that the content will still be accessible and usable.
22. Core HTML5 Canvas: Graphics, Animation, and Game Development
Author: David Geary
Price:$31
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Even though Core HTML5 Canvas is written for experienced software developers with an intermediate-level understanding of JavaScript, there is really something in here for everyone. This book shows you how to implement anything you can imagine with the Canvas 2D API, from text editors to video games.
23. Head First HTML and CSS
Author:Elisabeth Robson
Price:$23
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Do you ever feel like a book only makes sense when you are already an expert at something, well then it’s time you picked up Head First HTML, this book will give you a great introduction to learning HTML so you can finally create those web pages you’ve always wanted. Oh, and if you’ve never heard of CSS, that’s okay–however if you want to create great websites today there is really no way around CSS, and thats why this book also covers CSS.
24. CSS Pocket Reference
Author: Eric A. Meyer
Price: $11
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Sometimes you just can’t remember all the different codes needed for a website, well thats where CSS Pocket Reference delivers. This book has all the most essential information you need to implement CSS on the fly. This book is aimed at more advanced designers who just need to quickly check up on something. Along with a complete alphabetical reference to CSS3 selectors and properties, you’ll also find a short introduction to the key concepts of CSS.
25. jQuery: Novice to Ninja
Author:Earle Castledine
Price: $23
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This book is great if you want to jump-start your journey into jQuery. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer this book will have something for you. The book starts of with the basics, and then moves on to more advanced techniques, such as plugin development and the creation of almost every conceivable UI widget.