Yesterday I had the pleasure of sitting at the back of “Handcrafted CSS“, a workshop led by Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte. The workshop was based on their recently published book of the same name, if you don’t own a copy definitely add it to your holiday shopping list.
As attendees leafed through the book during the breaks I realised how much of I have relied on and enjoyed learning about web design and development from books. Funnily enough Dan’s first book, “Web Standard Solutions“, released in 2004 was the the first book I ever bought on CSS. It turns out it was the first CSS book for many designers I know. It taught me a lot and is still very relevant.
It got me thinking about the most inspiring web related books I have on my shelf. Here in no particular order are my personal top five. Some of them have been updated and superseded but all remain great reference material.
- Web Standard Solutions by Dan Cederholm
- Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke
- The PHP Anthology by Harry Fuecks et al (1st edition no longer available)
- The Definitive Guide to Django by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss
- DOM Scripting by Jeremey Keith
What are your favourites? Link up your must have’s in the comments, I have an Amazon voucher I need to spend and love a good read.



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