Web Development Books That Every Developer Should Know

INTRODUCTION

Website designing is recognised as a highly rated skill, and similar to other skills, you will need to read some of the top-notch website designing books. As a result, you will grab wisdom and inspiration along with learning tips and tricks necessary from professionals that will hone your craft. The old cliché is not wrong as it says the more you read, the more knowledge you will have. When it comes to website designing, it matters not whether you are a newbie to a web designer or a professional. As a leading web development company in India, we always encourage our team to read web design-related books, as a consistent reading of website design books will assist you in brushing up on the basics, learning unexampled things, and enhancing the skills of your website design more professionally.

How can web development books assist you as a creator?

There are dozens of things to learn from website design books when it comes to beautiful website creation. There are books on web design that will help you learn broadly how to make use of the right typography. Some will help beginners to advanced levels of HTML and CSS while others will assist to stay inspired, motivated and creative even when trying to come up with new ideas. Either way, as a website designer or creator, learning from web development books is one of the best ways to sharpen your craft. Moreover, attentive reading does need your precious time along with money devotion. As a result, this will ultimately assist you to learn how to create stunning websites that indeed stand out.

In this post expect to learn in detail about this book as we have compiled a list of helpful website design books that will effectively impact your craft as a web designer or creator. Ensure to bookmark this page for the purpose of future reference.

Web development books for every designer and developer

Online is full of great website design books for learning but you might find it difficult to pinpoint the right book for you. Some of the books on web design were written and published several years back and they contain valuable insight. As a result, you may want to go for one that is more contemporary and has suitable changes in website design and recent trends. In our 15 website designing books list we have added titles that are assistive to beginners along with experienced builders of websites. The titles cover topics starting from technical aspects, tips, and tricks, and web design along with advice on how to keep motivated when creating websites that are unique.

1. Design Basics Index by Jim Krause.

This is among the popular website development books across the globe for website creators of all levels of skills and experience. Typography, colors along with business applications are among the topics covered. It is written to be used as a source of learning for both digital design and print. This book has focused on what the author, Jim Krause has indicated as the 3Cs of Design. This includes three elements that are very crucial for all creators and designers of websites. These involve components such as photography, borders, text, and illustrations, a composition that is a process of commingling all the contrastive components in your design, and lastly concept that is a theme behind your design that will grab instantly the attention of your audience.

2. HTML & CSS: Design and Create Website By Jon Duckett

This an amazing book and learning resource that nourishes you on how to make a website with coding. He explains coding in an easy-to-understand way thus a helpful book for beginners. It allows the readers to get an entire overview of HTML along with CSS. With this book, you can learn the basics before you can dig deeper into enhanced-level lessons and be a better website designer with more experience. HTML and CSS: Designing and building a website covers complicated subjects masterfully so that even those who have never coded to learn from it. However, the book covers only HTML AND CSS but not JavaScript, which is a drawback for web creators interested in learning. 

3. Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

This is another great book for web design written by Jeffrey Zeldman for learning how to build functional, accessible web utilising the correct standards for websites. The website standards were initially established as guidelines to assist in building the most functional, inclusive, and accessible websites along with website applications. The updates are regularly done to these standards; therefore, web builders and designers have no options but to creatively design in compliance with these standards. You might find your web application suffers crucial compatibility features deficiency due to a lack of following the proper website standards. As a result, much time can t be consumed crafting and enhancing the design on various platforms, devices, or a browser. 

To eliminate this huge consumption of time, Jeffrey Zeldman elaborates in his book all the basics regarding website standards that you need to follow when designing accessible, responsive applications and websites. Ensure to acquire the latest version of this website design book when referring to it for the purpose of getting the most recent updated information. The third edition is the most updated version to make it a go-to.

4. Element Of Typographic Style By Robert Bringhurst

The element of typographic style was written by popular typographers and poets in Canada. It is the book for every single website designer and creator. The book contains content that teaches how to select and merge different fonts, how to empathize the right way to add and content-present your website design, and it also keeps its focus on typography aspects, technical details to current influences on language. It is a book that is easy to read and significant to website creators of skill levels and experience.

5. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability By Steve Krug

It is a web development book for websites and designers and it’s considered classic by many. To understand broadly website usability along with how to design with accessibility and inclusivity in mind, you can read this book though it’s mostly recommendable for advanced website developers and designers. Steve Krug in his book has included essential topics for any website builder such as how to build a simple web that can be read easily by your visitors, understand and navigate, test for the best user experience, and good website design fundamentals.

6. Web Form Design: filling in the blanks by Luke Wroblewski

Luke Wroblewski in his book Web form design focuses on a specific niche of website design. it teaches website designers and creators how to design engaging website forms effectively as the name of the book suggests. The forms of the website are one of the most crucial and utilized commonly methods for interacting with visitors to your site. While it’s a bit niche the topic itself, Luke Wroblewski’s website design book is valuable for those in need of learning how to build website forms that beef up engagement.

7. Design for hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty by David Kadavy

Regardless of the name, David Kadavy did not actually write for the hackers. Instead, hackers in this book refer to anyone with a curiosity about how thing work, in spite of their knowledge, skills, and background. That is the reason why this web development book is our recommendation to all creators of the website along with designers to read. Make this book a go-to whether an advanced web builder or a beginner having little to no experience in coding, it’s significantly helpful. You will learn classical techniques and principles utilized for creating any design that is beautiful, both in digital and print form. David Kadavy has included tons of real examples along with deconstructs of utilized techniques for building them. Moreover, the book also teaches how to employ similar knowledge to own web design or app design.

8. Above The Fold: Understanding The Principles Of Successful Website Design By Brian Miller

Above the Fold is a website design book for every website designer and creator and specifically written for beginners that provides timeless, fundamental knowledge on how to effectively communicate with the audience of your site utilizing your web design. The book is divided into three sections such as planning and usability, business value, and last but not least Design and typography. Therefore, it offers you a full overview of entire crucial topics related to effective and successful website design. Visit the second edition of this book which is the latest version and a great book to reference when having questions about website design principles that are effective.

9. Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

This is a website design book written and recommended to be read by all website builders. They may book may not teach you how to design applications and websites but may give you advice or ideas or how to stay inspired and discover your distinct own style as a creative individual. The language utilized in this book is simple to read and adorned with an illustration that is soothing. It is a book that you can quickly read and as well finish in your leisure time. It’s a book that will keep you motivated when building creatively though it doesn’t cover technical knowledge.

10. Keep Going: 10 Ways To Stay Creative In Good Times And Bad

This website development book has been written by the same author behind the book number 9 steal like an artist. The book teaches how to discover fresh unexampled ideas even when creativity is running out. In this website design book, Austin Kleon has used simple language to be understood by both inexperienced and experienced coders and designers thus simple to use. 

11. Web Design Playground: Html & CSS The Interactive Way

This book is equipped with content that teaches you how to design utilizing both HTML and CSS. With this book, you are able to create a visually stunning web interface, as well as how to write codes that transform vision into a reality. In this book, McFedries has included four sections such as get acquainted with HTML AND CSS, master page layout, adding images and styles to web page and using advanced HTML AND CSS to change color typography, and more. Moreover, this website design has included a web design playground just for you to keep testing them out. You are guaranteed to learn in and out of website design with HTML and CSS by the time are on the last page of this book. You will be able to design the following because each section of this book has given you a project to handle; 

• Landing page
• Portfolio page
• Personal home page
• Photo Gallery

12. The Principles Of Beautiful Web Design: Designing Great Web Sites Is Not Rocket Science!

This book is suitable for every creator or designer of websites in need of an introduction to design basics. However, before you can reach out to this web development book, ensure to have a basic understanding of what websites are and how they are built. In this book, Jason Beaird has introduced you to basic design principles but not step-by-step website creation from the scratch. You will require both of these when deeply learning website design but you will study them separately.  For the implementation piece, you will have to acquire it from the next couple of books. Jason Beaird in his book has included five chapters each handling basic principles of website design such as:

• Color
• Typography
• Texture
• Layouts and compositions
• Imagery

This book is yet another great source of education that provides you basics of beautiful website design. The author has well illustrated and it’s simple to read and understand.

13. Learn Web Design: A beginner’s Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics.

Looking for a great book for learning all codes behind the design? Learning web design will teach you how to make use of HTML and CSS to code. Nevertheless, this book takes a few further steps, and here is what you will learn from it:

• HTML for a structure that allows you to learn how text, links, forms, images, and tables are formatted.
• JavaScript for behavior does introduce you to this important language of programming and how it transforms into a website.
• CSS for presentation allows you to understand how you can create style sheets to change things such as background, color, layout, and more.
• This goes all the way into responsive imagery, the excellent format of files to make use of, strategies of optimization along with SVGs.

Every single chapter in this book is accompanied by a helpful snippet of code and graphics and is well-equipped with a quiz at the end.

14. LEARNING PHP, JavaScript, and MySQL: with jQuery, CSS&HTMLS5

It is a website design book that is well-written for curious web designers and developers.  In this book, Robin Nixon has cleary illustrated the scripting languages utilized to design web and basic formatting. If this is your solid grasp then consider making this book a go-to. Designers may not be a must to read this book but learning more about techniques of programming could help in building stronger websites that are future-proof to your clients. It’s a great source for developers and be ready to learn more about:

• Use of MySQL and MySQLi
• leveling up CSS to CSS3 and HTML TO HTML5
• managing user privacy and cookies
• building webpages that are dynamic for a personalized experience
• JavaScript enhancement with jQuery Libraries
• Website conversion into progressive web applications.

Similar to other books included in this list of web development books, high quality along with helpful coding snippets to work with have been included, you will also find quizzes to help you move on.

15. 6 Practical WordPress Projects

It’s a perfect book for WordPress designers with an urge to build a hundred percent websites that are bespoke. In the world of website designing and creating, there are dozens of ways to sell your services. Some of you will definitely fall in love with WordPress themes and others might discover the niche they serve requires something more custom. Therefore this web development book will come in handy. Here is what to learn from it.

• Plugin
• WordPress theme
• Admin Page
• A non-blog web
• Endpoints for the REST API

You may not be providing a custom WordPress Web to your client but the above will be something worth reading.

CONCLUSION

The entire list of website design books in this article provides you with dozens of value for web and graphic designers, although there is more to learn in design study like reading blogs and articles, the act of implementing what you are learning is all you need.  To acquire the name of a web designer or creator requires your commitment and practice. Remember an experienced website creator or a designer was once called a beginner, it’s just a matter of time in practice and a desire to create and design something more stunning and effective.

Acodez is a leading web development company in India offering all kinds of web design and development solutions at affordable prices. We are also an SEO and digital marketing agency offering inbound marketing solutions to take your business to the next level. For further information, please contact us today.