Recommended Books
Brief lists of good books about:
Each of the recommended books is linked directly to the appropriate page on
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Web Design Books
- Information
Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter
Morville (O'Reilly)
- This is without a doubt the second-most useful book on Web design on
the market (sorry, but I like my own book just a little better :-).
The authors' emphasis is on the structure of the site and how to facilitate
users' access to the information they need the most. Even though these are
crucial issues in Web usability, they are often overlooked in the quest for
cool pages (that download slowly and are impossible to navigate). I liked
the manuscript enough to write the foreword.
- Designing
Large-Scale Web Sites: A Visual Design Methodology, by Darrell Sano
- The major benefit of this book is that it focuses on the design of the
entire site as opposed to simply designing individual,
disconnected pages. Despite the title, the book is also
useful for designers of medium-sized sites or even smallish sites. Because
of its visual emphasis, this book is a good companion to the
Information Architecture book.
- Web Pages
That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design, by Vincent
Flanders and Michael Willis
- The hardcopy version of Flander's celebrated website: less conceptual
than Information Architecture but more fun. Truly, there are
so many useless Web pages out there that one can learn a lot from reading
these well-argued criticisms.
- Collaborative Web Development: Strategies and Best Practices for Web Teams, by Jessica R. Burdman
- Why do most Web projects fail? The most common problem is probably misguided goals (i.e., making a cool site rather than one that's good for customers). But the second most common problem is doubtlessly project management. You could even argue that pushing back on damaging goals should be the first duty of the project manager. Anyway, this is the book on how to run a Web project, what the different team members should do, and how to put together a good process. Oh yes, lack of process is another common reason for disaster.
- E-Commerce User Experience, by Jakob Nielsen, Rolf Molich, Carolyn Snyder, and Susan Farrell
- 207 guidelines for how to design e-commerce sites to make them more usable. All guidelines are based on findings from detailed usability studies of twenty e-commerce sites with users in the United States and Europe.
Overviews for Beginners
-
Web Design in a Nutshell
by Jennifer Niederst
- If you don't want to go too "deep" in thinking about Web design, then
this book gives a quick and colorful overview of the main issues.
- The Yale
Web Style Guide is now available as a hardcopy book.
- I tend to
prefer more principle-based or methodology-based books, but there is also
something to be said for a long list of detailed design rules. And the
online version of the Yale styleguide has for sure proven to be a classic over the years.
- Case studies and interviews:
Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
by Jennifer Fleming
- Not for utter beginners, but after reading Crystal Waters book you may
want more detail about large-scale Web designs. That's where this book
excels. This is not the ultimate book
on Web navigation (despite the title). It is more of a general book about
Web design; it's main strength is the way it provides insights into
several design projects.
Implementation-Oriented Books
- Learning Web Design : A Beginner's Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond, by Jennifer Niederst and Richard Koman (O'Reilly).
- If you don't know HTML there are a million books to learn from. This
one is a favorite of mine. The book does go beyond basic HTML 4.0 to explain CSS,
graphics formats, and the differences between browsers ("platform
idiosyncrasies" as the publisher delicately puts it).
- Cascading
Style Sheets, Second Edition: Designing for the Web, by Håkon Lie and Bert Bos
(Addison Wesley)
- Cascading style sheets are without a doubt the way to manage
presentation design across any medium- or large-size website. For once the
blurb on a book cover is right: the authors are indeed "the world
authorities" on stylesheets, leading the Web Consortium's stylesheet
project, so this is the ultimative reference for HTML stylesheets. Many
examples of the slightly obscure features in CSS show how stylesheets can
be used to achieve quite refined layouts and page-designs. It would be nice
to say that you can pick up CSS from simply looking at examples, but good
use actually requires a deeper understanding, as provided by this
textbook.
- Philip
and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing (second edition of Database Backed Web Sites: The
Thinking Person's Guide to Web Publishing), by Philip Greenspun
- Once you have learned basic HTML you will soon outgrow simple
page-based Web publishing and need a structured publishing solution. This
is a great book for understanding the issues in running a large site (or,
actually, any sites that do something).
- Java
Look and Feel Design Guidelines
- This is the official style guide from Sun Microsystems. I happen to know
the lead author who is an extremely experienced and talented senior
user interface engineer. So the guidelines are sound advice. But the main
reason to use the book for any Java project is that consistency is key to
usability. Don't invent your own weird interaction style when you can use
proven ideas that users will know from other applets and applications.
Also, by following the official rules, you will ensure that users with
disabilities can use your interface. There are several other aspects
of interaction design that are often overlooked in the heat of fast-moving
Internet projects but are still important: following the guidelines keeps
you honest and guards against such design mistakes.
How to Buy
These books can be ordered from the Amazon.com online bookstore by clicking on
the titles.
This service is provided
in association with Amazon.com Books
and any questions regarding pricing or handling of orders should be
directed to
Amazon.com.
Hyperlinking an editorial site to a fulfillment service is a great example
of value-added use of the Web: there is no way I can have a warehouse of
books, but through the links you can buy even though I can't sell.
Disclaimer
The books recommended on these pages are ones that I personally like and
find valuable. There are many other good books that I simply haven't read
and thus can't recommend here.