I love making websites at Fasturtle, and I always want to get better at my job. As any young designer/developer should, I have been reading voraciously. This holiday season, pick up some books to aid the budding web designer/developer in your life. Even if it’s you.
The obvious starting point is Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards. Originally published in 2003, but recently updated to the third edition with new sections on HTML5 and CSS3, the book offers a history of the pains people fought to establish Web Standards and why they make your job easier. Zeldman’s book will have you peppering your speech with words like “semantic,” “validate,” and “effing tables.” Not only that, but you can ponder the imponderable: Why does he wear that silly beanie? Check this book out and you might just have a new hat to show off next November 26th.
After all the standards introduction and theory, I highly recommend a few books by Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits. Dan provides thoughtful solutions for common visual layout issues. Zeldman says himself, “Dan is no standards zealot. He’s the guy in the trenches.” After Cederholm gets you off on the right foot in his book Web Standards Solutions, he will show you some great techniques for building stable, scalable websites with Bulletproof Web Design. Dan’s techniques are simple enough to comprehend, will expand your mind about elements and properties, but also make you say aloud, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Last, a great book to buy and keep forever by your side is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. This is a book that you need to hold on to. beout channel You will read it once, but then refer to it again and again to recall the proper way to accomplish something in type. Try out The Elements of Web Typography to see if it’s up your alley. Not every writer needs to be a proper coder, but every coder needs to be a proper writer.
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