We've ranked the best web development books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug
5.0
Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, over 400,000 Web designers and developers have relied on Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design.
In this 3rd edition, Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic-–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.
If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.
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Recommended by Brian Armstrong, Jeff Atwood, Ken Norton, and 13 others.
Anoop Anthony
Krug was teaching usability two decades ago when UX wasn't a buzzword, and the WWW was still in its nascent stages. (The first edition of this book was published in 2000!) I cut my teeth on Don't make me think back when I first started out in the industry. It is now in its third edition and still relevant — it offers compelling insights into building great user experiences into websites and applications. [source]
Auston Bunsen
I’m actually a self-taught programmer, so these books have really helped me with practical skills that I could put to use & yield results. The return on investment for these kinds of books is off the charts for me! [source]
Chris Goward
Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: … Don't Make Me Think. [source]
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HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
Jon Duckett
4.8
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.
• Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout
• Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging
• Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisure
This educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way!
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JavaScript: The Good Parts
Douglas Crockford
4.7
Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.
Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.
When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:
Syntax Objects Functions Inheritance Arrays Regular expressions Methods Style Beautiful features The real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.
With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.
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Recommended by Auston Bunsen.
Auston Bunsen
I’m actually a self-taught programmer, so these books have really helped me with practical skills that I could put to use & yield results. The return on investment for these kinds of books is off the charts for me! [source]
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The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
4.6
-- Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process--taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and youll learn how to *Fight software rot; *Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge; *Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code; *Avoid programming by coincidence; *Bullet-proof your code with contracts, assertions, and exceptions; *Capture real requirements; *Test ruthlessly and effectively; *Delight your users; *Build teams of pragmatic programmers; and *Make your developments more precise with automation. Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with entertaining anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether youre a new coder, an experienced programm
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Recommended by Jeff Atwood, Hadley Wickham, and 1 others.
This book is about the craft of software development, and thinking about how to produce good code. [source]
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JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
Jon Duckett
4.6
Learn JavaScript and jQuery a nicer way
This full-color book adopts a visual approach to teaching JavaScript & jQuery, showing you how to make web pages more interactive and interfaces more intuitive through the use of inspiring code examples, infographics, and photography. The content assumes no previous programming experience, other than knowing how to create a basic web page in HTML & CSS. You'll learn how to achieve techniques seen on many popular websites (such as adding animation, tabbed panels, content sliders, form validation, interactive galleries, and sorting data)..Introduces core programming concepts in JavaScript and jQueryUses clear descriptions, inspiring examples, and easy-to-follow diagramsTeaches you how to create scripts from scratch, and understand the thousands of JavaScripts, JavaScript APIs, and jQuery plugins that are available on the webDemonstrates the latest practices in progressive enhancement, cross-browser compatibility, and when you may be better off using CSS3
If you're looking to create more enriching web experiences and express your creativity through code, then this is the book for you.This book is also available as part of a set in hardcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781119038634 - and in softcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781118907443.
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Eloquent Javascript: A Modern Introduction to Programming
Marijn Haverbeke
4.6
Completely revised and updated, this best-selling introduction to programming in JavaScript focuses on writing real applications.
Eloquent JavaScript dives into the JavaScript language to show programmers how to write elegant, effective JavaScript code. Like any good programming book, Eloquent JavaScript begins with fundamentals--variables, control structures, functions, and data structures--then moves on to complex topics like object-oriented programming and regular expressions. This third edition introduces new features covering the 2017 version of JavaScript, such as class notation, arrow functions, iterators, async functions, template strings, and black scope. Author Marijn Haverbeke keeps the friendly tone and easy-to-follow explanations that made the original a hit, and he adds new exercises for readers to test their skills. Eloquent JavaScript will have readers fluent in the language of the web in no time, eloquently.
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.
In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behavior. Now fully expanded and updated, with a new introduction by the author, The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how—and why—some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.
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Recommended by Andrew Chen, Marissa Mayer, Nir Eyal, and 23 others.
Grey Baker
I mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems ever since. [source]
Julia Enthoven
For people interested in designing or building software products: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. Both books have informed my product sense and helped me make decisions about great UX. [source]
Kaci Lambe
These three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. [source]
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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
David Flanagan
4.5
Since 1996, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has been the bible for JavaScript programmers—a programmer's guide and comprehensive reference to the core language and to the client-side JavaScript APIs defined by web browsers. The 6th edition covers HTML5 and ECMAScript 5, with new chapters on jQuery and server side JavaScript. It's recommended for experienced programmers who want to learn the programming language of the Web, and for current JavaScript programmers who want to master it.
How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?
Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.
Eyal provides readers with:
• Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love.
• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.
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Recommended by Andrew Chen, Nir Eyal, Ken Norton, and 41 others.
Matt Mullenweg
Founder & CEO/Automattic
Hooked gives you the blueprint for the next generation of products. Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will. [source]
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
The book everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about. [source]
Chandini Jain
One of the five books Chandini would you recommend to young people interested in her career path. [source]
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Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to Html, Css, Javascript, and Web Graphics
Jennifer Robbins
4.4
Do you want to build web pages but have no prior 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 multicolumn pages that adapt for mobile devices.
Each chapter provides exercises to help you 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. It is simple and clear enough for beginners, yet thorough enough to be a useful reference for experienced developers keeping their skills up to date.
Build HTML pages with text, links, images, tables, and forms Use style sheets (CSS) for colors, backgrounds, formatting text, page layout, and even simple animation effects Learn how JavaScript works and why the language is so important in web design Create and optimize web images so they'll download as quickly as possible
NEW! Use CSS Flexbox and Grid for sophisticated and flexible page layout
NEW! Learn the ins and outs of Responsive Web Design to make web pages look great on all devices
NEW! Become familiar with the command line, Git, and other tools in the modern web developer's toolkit
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Robert C. Martin
4.4
Even bad code can function. But if code isn t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn t have to be that way. Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code on the fly into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer but only if you work at it. What kind of work will you be doing? You ll be reading code lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what s right about that code, and what s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and smells gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code. Readers will come away from this book understanding
How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code. "
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Recommended by Ana Bell.
Ana Bell
This book is going to show you how to write code that is readable by yourself in the future, or by somebody else. You can sit on the couch and read it; you don’t need to code. You can actually enjoy it if you don’t know how to program at all. [source]
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Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript: With jQuery, CSS & HTML5 (Learning PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, CSS & HTML5)
Robin Nixon
4.4
Build interactive, data-driven websites with the potent combination of open source technologies and web standards, even if you have only basic HTML knowledge. In this update to this popular hands-on guide, you’ll tackle dynamic web programming with the latest versions of today’s core technologies: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, and key jQuery libraries.
Web designers will learn how to use these technologies together and pick up valuable web programming practices along the way—including how to optimize websites for mobile devices. At the end of the book, you’ll put everything together to build a fully functional social networking site suitable for both desktop and mobile browsers.
Explore MySQL, from database structure to complex queries Use the MySQLi extension, PHP’s improved MySQL interface Create dynamic PHP web pages that tailor themselves to the user Manage cookies and sessions and maintain a high level of security Enhance the JavaScript language with jQuery and jQuery mobile libraries Use Ajax calls for background browser-server communication Style your web pages by acquiring CSS2 and CSS3 skills Implement HTML5 features, including geolocation, audio, video, and the canvas element Reformat your websites into mobile web apps
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The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.
The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."
From "The Everything Store", written by Brad Stone “An influential computer scientist makes the counterintuitive argument that small groups of engineers are more effective than larger ones at handling complex software projects. The book lays out the theory behind Amazon’s two pizza teams,” Stone writes. [source]
An early look and experience with timeless truths (and gotchas) from systems building with teams [source]
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Css: The Missing Manual
David Sawyer McFarland
4.4
CSS lets you create professional-looking websites, but learning its finer points can be tricky--even for seasoned web developers. This fully updated edition provides the most modern and effective tips, tricks, and tutorial-based instruction on CSS available today. Learn how to use new tools such as Flexbox and Sass to build web pages that look great and run fast on any desktop or mobile device. Ideal for casual and experienced designers alike.
The important stuff you need to know:
Start with the basics. Write CSS-friendly HTML, including the HTML5 tags recognized by today's browsers.
Design for mobile devices. Create web pages that look great when visitors use them on the go.
Make your pages work for you. Add animations that capture the imagination, and forms that get the job done.
Take control of page layouts. Use professional design techniques such as floats and positioning.
Make your layouts more flexible. Design websites with Flexbox that adjust to different devices and screen sizes.
Work more efficiently. Write less CSS code and work with smaller files, using Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets (Sass).
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CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems
Lea Verou
4.3
Based on two popular talks from author Lea Verou--including "CSS3 Secrets: 10 things you may not know about CSS"--this practical guide provides intermediate to advanced CSS developers with more than 40 undocumented techniques and tips for using CSS3 to create better websites.
The talks that spawned this book have been top-rated by attendees in every conference they were presented, and praised in industry media such as ."net" magazine.Get information you won't find in any other bookLearn through small, easily digestible chaptersHelps you understand CSS more deeply so you can improve your own solutionsApply Lea's techniques to practically every CSS problem you faceGain tips from a rockstar author who serves as an Invited Expert in W3C's CSS Working Group
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Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
Eric Freeman
4.3
Tired of reading HTML books that only make sense after you're an expert? Then it's about time you picked up Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and really learned HTML. You want to learn HTML so you can finally create those web pages you've always wanted, so you can communicate more effectively with friends, family, fans, and fanatic customers. You also want to do it right so you can actually maintain and expand your Web pages over time, and so your web pages work in all the browsers and mobile devices out there. Oh, and if you've never heard of CSS, that's okay - we won't tell anyone you're still partying like it's 1999 - but if you're going to create Web pages in the 21st century then you'll want to know and understand CSS.
Learn the real secrets of creating Web pages, and why everything your boss told you about HTML tables is probably wrong (and what to do instead). Most importantly, hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions how his HTML is now strict, and his CSS is in an external style sheet.
With Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking web-safe colors still matter, and the foolishness of slipping a font tag into your pages. Best of all, you'll learn HTML and CSS in a way that won't put you to sleep. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect: a visually-rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, this book will load HTML, CSS, and XHTML into your brain in a way that sticks.
So what are you waiting for? Leave those other dusty books behind and come join us in Webville. Your tour is about to begin.
"Elegant design is at the core of every chapter here, each concept conveyed with equal doses of pragmatism and wit." --Ken Goldstein, Executive Vice President, Disney Online
"This book is a thoroughly modern introduction to forward-looking practices in web page markup and presentation." --Danny Goodman, author of Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Guide
"What used to be a long trial and error learning process has now been reduced neatly into an engaging paperback." --Mike Davidson, CEO, Newsvine, Inc.
"I love Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML--it teaches you everything you need to learn in a 'fun coated' format!" --Sally Applin, UI Designer and Artist
"I haven't had as much fun reading a book (other than Harry Potter) in years. And your book finally helped me break out of my hapless so-last-century way of creating web pages." --Professor David M. Arnow, Department of Computer and Information Science, Brooklyn College
"If you've ever had a family member who wanted you to design a website for them, buy them Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. If you've ever asked a family member to design you a web site, buy this book. If you've ever bought an HTML book and ended up using it to level your desk, or for kindling on a cold winter day, buy this book. This is the book you've been waiting for. This is the learning system you've been waiting for." --Warren Kelly, Blogcritics.org
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High Performance Browser Networking
Ilya Grigorik
4.3
How prepared are you to build fast and efficient web applications? This eloquent book provides what every web developer should know about the network, from fundamental limitations that affect performance to major innovations for building even more powerful browser applications—including HTTP 2.0 and XHR improvements, Server-Sent Events (SSE), WebSocket, and WebRTC.
Author Ilya Grigorik, a web performance engineer at Google, demonstrates performance optimization best practices for TCP, UDP, and TLS protocols, and explains unique wireless and mobile network optimization requirements. You’ll then dive into performance characteristics of technologies such as HTTP 2.0, client-side network scripting with XHR, real-time streaming with SSE and WebSocket, and P2P communication with WebRTC.
Deliver superlative TCP, UDP, and TLS performance Speed up network performance over 3G/4G mobile networks Develop fast and energy-efficient mobile applications Address bottlenecks in HTTP 1.x and other browser protocols Plan for and deliver the best HTTP 2.0 performance Enable efficient real-time streaming in the browser Create efficient peer-to-peer videoconferencing and low-latency applications with real-time WebRTC transports
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You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
Kyle Simpson
4.3
It’s easy to learn parts of JavaScript, but much harder to learn it completely—or even sufficiently—whether you’re new to the language or have used it for years. With the "You Don’t Know JS" book series, you’ll get a more complete understanding of JavaScript, including trickier parts of the language that many experienced JavaScript programmers simply avoid.
The series’ first book, Up & Going, provides the necessary background for those of you with limited programming experience. By learning the basic building blocks of programming, as well as JavaScript’s core mechanisms, you’ll be prepared to dive into the other, more in-depth books in the series—and be well on your way toward true JavaScript.
With this book you will:
Learn the essential programming building blocks, including operators, types, variables, conditionals, loops, and functions Become familiar with JavaScript's core mechanisms such as values, function closures, this, and prototypes Get an overview of other books in the series—and learn why it’s important to understand all parts of JavaScript
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HTML5 for Web Designers
Jeremy Keith
4.3
HTML5 is the longest HTML specification ever written. It is also the most powerful, and in some ways, the most confusing. What do accessible, content-focused standards-based web designers and front-end developers need to know? And how can we harness the power of HTML5 in today’s browsers?
In this brilliant and entertaining user’s guide, Jeremy Keith cuts to the chase, with crisp, clear, practical examples, and his patented twinkle and charm.
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You Don't Know JS: Scope and Closures (You Don't Know JS, #2)
Kyle Simpson
4.3
No matter how much experience you have with JavaScript, odds are you don't fully understand the language. This concise yet in-depth guide takes you inside scope and closures, two core concepts you need to know to become a more efficient and effective JavaScript programmer. You'll learn how and why they work, and how an understanding of closures can be a powerful part of your development skillset.
Like other books in the "You Don't Know JS" series, Scope and Closures dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this knowledge, you can achieve true JavaScript mastery.
Learn about scope, a set of rules to help JavaScript engines locate variables in your code Go deeper into nested scope, a series of containers for variables and functions Explore function- and block-based scope, "hoisting", and the patterns and benefits of scope-based hiding Discover how to use closures for synchronous and asynchronous tasks, including the creation of JavaScript libraries
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JavaScript & jQuery The Missing Manual
David Sawyer McFarland
4.3
JavaScript lets you supercharge your HTML with animation, interactivity, and visual effects--but many web designers find the language hard to learn. This easy-to-read guide not only covers JavaScript basics, but also shows you how to save time and effort with the jQuery and jQuery UI libraries of prewritten JavaScript code. You'll build web pages that feel and act like desktop programs--with little or no programming.
The important stuff you need to know: Pull back the curtain on JavaScript. Learn how to build a basic program with this language. Get up to speed on jQuery. Quickly assemble JavaScript programs that work well on multiple web browsers.Transform your user interface. Learn jQuery UI, the JavaScript library for interface features like design themes and controls.Make your pages interactive. Create JavaScript events that react to visitor actions.Use animations and effects. Build drop-down navigation menus, pop-ups, automated slideshows, and more.Collect data with web forms. Create easy-to-use forms that ensure more accurate visitor responses.Practice with living examples. Get step-by-step tutorials for web projects you can build yourself.
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Sass for Web Designers
Dan Cederholm
4.3
Let’s face it: CSS is hard. Our stylesheets are more complex than they used to be, and we’re bending the spec to do as much as it can. Can Sass help?
A reluctant convert to Sass, Dan Cederholm tells how he came around to the popular CSS pre-processor, and shares just what you need to take better control of your stylesheets (all the while working the way you always have). From getting started to advanced techniques, Dan will help you level up your stylesheets and get back to work in no time.
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PHP and MySQL Web Development
Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
4.3
PHP and MySQL Web Development, Fifth EditionThe definitive guide to building database-driven Web applications with PHP and MySQL PHP and MySQL are popular open-source technologies that are ideal for quickly developing database-driven Web applications. PHP is a powerful scripting language designed to enable developers to create highly featured Web applications quickly, and MySQL is a fast, reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suited for dynamic Internet-based applications. PHP and MySQL Web Development shows how to use these tools together to produce effective, interactive Web applications. It clearly describes the basics of the PHP language, explains how to set up and work with a MySQL database, and then shows how to use PHP to interact with the database and the server. This practical, hands-on book consistently focuses on real-world applications, even in the introductory chapters. The authors cover important aspects of security and authentication as they relate to building a real-world website and show you how to implement these aspects in PHP and MySQL. They also introduce you to the integration of front-end and back-end technologies by using JavaScript in your application development. The final part of this book describes how to approach real-world projects and takes the reader through the design, planning, and building of several projects, including: User authentication and personalization Web-based email Social media integration Shopping cart The fifth edition of PHP and MySQL Web Development has been thoroughly updated, revised, and expanded to cover developments in PHP through versions 5.6 and 7, as well as features introduced in recent stable releases of MySQL. Free Access to Web Edition Purchase of this book in any format, electronic or print, includes free access to the corresponding Web Edition, which provides several special features: The complete text of the book online Exercises and interactive quizzes to test your understanding of the material Bonus chapters not included in the print or e-book editions Updates and corrections as they become available The Web Edition can be viewed on all types of computers and mobile devices with any modern web browser that supports HTML5. Contents at a Glance Part I: Using PHP 1 PHP Crash Course 2 Storing and Retrieving Data 3 Using Arrays 4 String Manipulation and Regular Expressions 5 Reusing Code and Writing Functions 6 Object-Oriented PHP 7 Error and Exception Handling Part II: Using MySQL 8 Designing Your Web Database 9 Creating Your Web Database 10 Working with Your MySQL Database 11 Accessing Your MySQL Database from the Web with PHP 12 Advanced MySQL Administration 13 Advanced MySQL Programming Part III: Web Application Security 14 Web Application Security Risks 15 Building a Secure Web Application 16 Implementing Authentication Methods with PHP Part IV: Advanced PHP Techniques 17 Interacting with the File System and the Server 18 Using Network and Protocol Functions 19 Managing the Date and Time 20 Internationalization and Localization 21 Generating Images 22 Using Session Control in PHP 23 Integrating JavaScript and PHP 24 Other Useful Features Part V: Building Practical PHP and MySQL Projects 25 Using PHP and MySQL for Large Projects 26 Debugging and Logging 27 Building User Authentication and Personalization 28 (Web Edition) Building a Web-Based Email Client with Laravel Part I 29 (Web Edition) Building a Web-Based Email Client with Laravel Part II 30 (Web Edition) Social Media Integration Sharing and Authentication 31 (Web Edition) Building a Shopping Cart Part VI: Appendix A Installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL
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Recommended by Scott Johnson.
Scott Johnson
I spent a ton of years doing mostly product management as opposed to software engineering (what I do now). Although I had written code and managed engineers, I wasn't really a hands on software engineer. In the wake of the dot com crisis, when everyone was unemployed, when an unexpected software engineering gig landed on me, the book PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson literally taught me database backed web development. Oddly enough, two years later, I ended up marrying one of the book's editors. If I hadn't read that book, I wouldn't have ended up speaking at the PHP conference where I met my wife and I would not be married to her (or have my kids). That one book took me down the Open Source path and while I've changed languages (Ruby / Rails), it literally changed every single aspect of my life. [source]
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Hardboiled Web Design
Andy Clarke
4.3
If you’ve been working on the web for a while, your bookshelves may already be buckling under the weight of books about HTML and CSS. Do you really need another one?
Hardboiled Web Design is different. It’s for people who want to understand why, when and how to use the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technologies in their everyday work. Not tomorrow or next week, but today. It won’t teach you the basics of writing markup or CSS, but if you’re hungry to learn about how the latest technologies and techniques will make your websites and applications more creative, flexible and adaptable, then this is the book for you.
Are you ready to get hardboiled?
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Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja
John Resig
4.3
Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja uses practical examples to clearly illustrate each core concept and technique. This completely revised edition shows you how to master key JavaScript concepts such as functions, closures, objects, prototypes, and promises. It covers APIs such as the DOM, events, and timers. You’ll discover best practice techniques such as testing, and cross-browser development, all taught from the perspective of skilled JavaScript practitioners.
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Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
Steve Krug
4.3
It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usability consultant to conduct each round of tests, it rarely happens.
In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Think, "It's not rocket surgery".)
In this new book, Steve explains how to:
-Test any design, from a sketch on a napkin to a fully-functioning web site or application -Keep your focus on finding the most important problems (because no one has the time or resources to fix them all) -Fix the problems that you find, using his "The least you can do" approach
By pairing the process of testing and fixing products down to its essentials (A morning a month, that's all we ask ), Rocket Surgery makes it realistic for teams to test early and often, catching problems while it's still easy to fix them. Rocket Surgery Made Easy adds demonstration videos to the proven mix of clear writing, before-and-after examples, witty illustrations, and practical advice that made Don't Make Me Think so popular.
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Recommended by Paul Boag.
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Design Is a Job
Mike Monteiro
4.3
Co-founder of Mule Design and raconteur Mike Monteiro wants to help you do your job better. From contracts to selling design, from working with clients to working with each other, this brief book is packed with knowledge you can’t afford not to know.
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CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Cameron Moll, Andy Budd, Simon Collison
4.3
This book is your indispensable guide to cutting-edge CSS developmentall you need to work your way up to CSS professional. You'll learn how to: - Plan, organize, and maintain your stylesheets more effectively - Apply the secrets of liquid, elastic, and hybrid layouts - Create flickr-style image maps, remote rollovers, and other advanced CSS features - Lay out forms using pure CSS - Recognize common browser bugs, and how to fix them
While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing sites using CSS, you will come across all kinds of infuriating browser bugs and inconsistencies. It sometimes feels like there are a million and one different techniques to master, spread across a bewildering array of websites. The range of possibilities seems endless and makes for a steep and daunting learning curve. By bringing all of the latest tips, tricks, and techniques together in one handy reference, this book demystifies the secrets of CSS and makes the journey to CSS mastery as simple and painless as possible. While most books concentrate on basic skills, this one is different, assuming that you already know the basics and why you should be using CSS in your work, and concentrating mainly on advanced techniques. It begins with a brief recap of CSS fundamentals such as the importance of meaningful markup, how to structure and maintain your code, and how the CSS layout model really works. With the basics out of the way, each subsequent chapter details a particular aspect of CSS-based design. Through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials, you will learn practical CSS techniques you can immediately start using in your daily work. Browser inconsistencies are the thorn in most CSS developers' sides, so we have dedicated two whole chapters to CSS hacks, filters, and bug fixing, as well as looking at image replacement; professional link, form, and list styling; pure CSS layouts; and much more. All of these techniques are then put into practice in two beautifully designed case studies, written by two of the world's best CSS designers, Simon Collison and Cameron Moll.
Summary of Contents: - Chapter 1: Setting the Foundations - Chapter 2: Visual Formatting Model Recap - Chapter 3: Background Images and Image Replacement - Chapter 4: Styling Links - Chapter 5: Styling Lists and Creating Nav Bars - Chapter 6: Styling Forms and Data Tables - Chapter 7: Layout - Chapter 8: Hacks and Filters - Chapter 9: Bugs and Bug Fixing - Case Study 1: More Than Doodles - Case Study 2: Tuscany Luxury Resorts
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JavaScript Patterns
Stoyan Stefanov
4.3
What's the best approach for developing an application with JavaScript? This book helps you answer that question with numerous JavaScript coding patterns and best practices. If you're an experienced developer looking to solve problems related to objects, functions, inheritance, and other language-specific categories, the abstractions and code templates in this guide are ideal -- whether you're writing a client-side, server-side, or desktop application with JavaScript.
Written by JavaScript expert Stoyan Stefanov -- Senior Yahoo! Technical and architect of YSlow 2.0, the web page performance optimization tool -- JavaScript Patterns includes practical advice for implementing each pattern discussed, along with several hands-on examples. You'll also learn about anti-patterns: common programming approaches that cause more problems than they solve.
Explore useful habits for writing high-quality JavaScript code, such as avoiding globals, using single var declarations, and more Learn why literal notation patterns are simpler alternatives to constructor functions Discover different ways to define a function in JavaScript Create objects that go beyond the basic patterns of using object literals and constructor functions Learn the options available for code reuse and inheritance in JavaScript Study sample JavaScript approaches to common design patterns such as Singleton, Factory, Decorator, and more Examine patterns that apply specifically to the client-side browser environment
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31
Thinking With Type
Ellen Lupton
4.3
Our all time best selling book is now available in a revised and expanded second edition. Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication, from the printed page to the computer screen. This revised edition includes forty-eight pages of new content, including the latest information on style sheets for print and the web, the use of ornaments and captions, lining and non-lining numerals, the use of small caps and enlarged capitals, as well as information on captions, font licensing, mixing typefaces, and hand lettering. Throughout the book, visual examples show how to be inventive within systems of typographic form—what the rules are and how to break them. Thinking with Type is a type book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, and anyone else who works with words. The popular online companion to Thinking with Type (www.thinkingwithtype.com) has been revised to reflect the new material in the second edition.
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Recommended by David Kadavy, Kimberly Gloria Choi, Marius Ciuchete Paun, and 1 others.
Kimberly Gloria Choi
When asked what books she would recommend to youngsters interested in her professional path, Kimberly mentioned Thinking with Type. [source]
Marius Ciuchete Paun
Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug “Geometry of Design” by Kimberly Elam “Grid Systems in Graphic Design” by Josef Müller-Brockmann “ReWork” by Jason Fried These titles should be a good start, I think. [source]
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Head First HTML and CSS
Elisabeth Robson, Eric Freeman
4.3
Tired of reading HTML books that only make sense after you're an expert? Then it's about time you picked up Head First HTML and really learned HTML. You want to learn HTML so you can finally create those web pages you've always wanted, so you can communicate more effectively with friends, family, fans, and fanatic customers. You also want to do it right so you can actually maintain and expand your web pages over time so they work in all browsers and mobile devices. Oh, and if you've never heard of CSS, that's okay--we won't tell anyone you're still partying like it's 1999--but if you're going to create web pages in the 21st century then you'll want to know and understand CSS.
Learn the real secrets of creating web pages, and why everything your boss told you about HTML tables is probably wrong (and what to do instead). Most importantly, hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions how his HTML is now strict, and his CSS is in an external style sheet.
With Head First HTML, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking web-safe colors still matter, and the foolishness of slipping a font tag into your pages. Best of all, you'll learn HTML and CSS in a way that won't put you to sleep. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect: a visually-rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, this book will load HTML and CSS into your brain in a way that sticks.
So what are you waiting for? Leave those other dusty books behind and come join us in Webville. Your tour is about to begin.
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High Performance Web Sites
Steve Souders
4.2
Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.
The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.
Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to:
Make Fewer HTTP Requests Use a Content Delivery Network Add an Expires Header Gzip Components Put Stylesheets at the Top Put Scripts at the Bottom Avoid CSS Expressions Make JavaScript and CSS External Reduce DNS Lookups Minify JavaScript Avoid Redirects Remove Duplicates Scripts Configure ETags Make Ajax Cacheable If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable.
"If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be a dramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's really no excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore."
-Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector
"Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance."
-Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation
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Web Design with Html, Css, JavaScript and Jquery Set
Jon Duckett
4.2
A two-book set for web designers and front-end developers This two-book set combines the titles HTML & CSS: Designing and Building Web Sites and JavaScript & jQuery: Interactive Front-End Development. Together these two books form an ideal platform for anyone who wants to master HTML and CSS before stepping up to JavaScript and jQuery.
HTML & CSS covers structure, text, links, images, tables, forms, useful options, adding style with CSS, fonts, colors, thinking in boxes, styling lists and tables, layouts, grids, and even SEO, Google analytics, ftp, and HTML5. JavaScript & jQuery offers an excellent combined introduction to these two technologies using a clear and simple visual approach using diagrams, infographics, and photographs.
A handy two-book set that uniquely combines related technologies Highly visual format and accessible language makes these books highly effective learning tools Perfect for beginning web designers and front-end developers
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Designing with Web Standards
Jeffrey Zeldman
4.2
You code. And code. And code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again.
You can get off the merry-go-round.
It's time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it's time for forward compatibility.
Isn't it high time you started designing with web standards?
Standards aren't about leaving users behind or adhering to inflexible rules. Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today. You can't afford to design tomorrow's sites with yesterday's piecemeal methods.
Jeffrey teaches you to:
- Slash design, development, and quality assurance costs (or do great work in spite of constrained budgets)
- Deliver superb design and sophisticated functionality without worrying about browser incompatibilities
- Set up your site to work as well five years from now as it does today
- Redesign in hours instead of days or weeks
- Welcome new visitors and make your content more visible to search engines
- Stay on the right side of accessibility laws and guidelines
- Support wireless and PDA users without the hassle and expense of multiple versions
- Improve user experience with faster load times and fewer compatibility headaches
- Separate presentation from structure and behavior, facilitating advanced publishing workflows
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Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting Against Worst-Case Scenarios with XHTML and CSS
Dan Cederholm
4.2
No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it's not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn't really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control--key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.
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The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
Jesse James Garrett
4.2
From the moment it was published almost ten years ago, Elements of User Experience became a vital reference for web and interaction designers the world over, and has come to define the core principles of the practice. Now, in this updated, expanded, and full-color new edition, Jesse James Garrett has refined his thinking about the Web, going beyond the desktop to include information that also applies to the sudden proliferation of mobile devices and applications. Successful interaction design requires more than just creating clean code and sharp graphics. You must also fulfill your strategic objectives while meeting the needs of your users. Even the best content and the most sophisticated technology won't help you balance those goals without a cohesive, consistent user experience to support it. With so many issues involved--usability, brand identity, information architecture, interaction design-- creating the user experience can be overwhelmingly complex. This new edition of The Elements of User Experience cuts through that complexity with clear explanations and vivid illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques. Garrett gives readers the big picture of user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design.
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Recommended by Kaci Lambe Kai.
Kaci Lambe Kai
These three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. [source]
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Head First Design Patterns
Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra, Elisabeth Robson
4.2
You're not alone.
At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun.
You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code.
You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design pattern.
Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter.
With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts.
If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect--a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.
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Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks
Luke Wroblewski
4.2
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40
Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript
David Herman
4.2
"It's uncommon to have a programming language wonk who can speak in such comfortable and friendly language as David does. His walk through the syntax and semantics of JavaScript is both charming and hugely insightful; reminders of gotchas complement realistic use cases, paced at a comfortable curve. You'll find when you finish the book that you've gained a strong and comprehensive sense of mastery." --Paul Irish, developer advocate, Google Chrome "This is not a book for those looking for shortcuts; rather it is hard-won experience distilled into a guided tour. It's one of the few books on JS that I'll recommend without hesitation." --Alex Russell, TC39 member, software engineer, Google In order to truly master JavaScript, you need to learn how to work effectively with the language's flexible, expressive features and how to avoid its pitfalls. No matter how long you've been writing JavaScript code, Effective JavaScript will help deepen your understanding of this powerful language, so you can build more predictable, reliable, and maintainable programs. Author David Herman, with his years of experience on Ecma's JavaScript standardization committee, illuminates the language's inner workings as never before--helping you take full advantage of JavaScript's expressiveness. Reflecting the latest versions of the JavaScript standard, the book offers well-proven techniques and best practices you'll rely on for years to come. Effective JavaScript is organized around 68 proven approaches for writing better JavaScript, backed by concrete examples. You'll learn how to choose the right programming style for each project, manage unanticipated problems, and work more successfully with every facet of JavaScript programming from data structures to concurrency. Key features include Better ways to use prototype-based object-oriented programming Subtleties and solutions for working with arrays and dictionary objects Precise and practical explanations of JavaScript's functions and variable scoping semantics Useful JavaScript programming patterns and idioms, such as options objects and method chaining In-depth guidance on using JavaScript's unique "run-to-completion" approach to concurrency
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41
You Don't Know JS: Types & Grammar
Kyle Simpson
4.2
No matter how much experience you have with JavaScript, odds are you don't fully understand the language. As part of the "You Don't Know JS" series, this compact guide explores JavaScript types in greater depth than previous treatments, defining the problems of coercion, demonstrating why types work, and showing developers how to take advantage of those features.
The type system in JavaScript is subject to several misconceptions. Many developers believe that JavaScript has no types, but that's not the case. JavaScript uses a number of types behind the scenes, and has a sophisticated system of implicit and explicit coercion between the various types. This book gives you the complete story.
Like other books in this series, "You Don't Know JS: Types & Grammar" dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this knowledge, you can achieve true JavaScript mastery.
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You Don't Know JS: this & Object Prototypes
Kyle Simpson
4.2
No matter how much experience you have with JavaScript, odds are you don't fully understand the language. This concise, in-depth guide takes you inside JavaScript's this structure and object prototypes. You'll learn how they work and why they're integral to behavior delegation--a design pattern in which objects are linked, rather than cloned.
Like other books in the "You Don't Know JS" series, this and Object Prototypes dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this knowledge, you can become a true JavaScript master.
With this book you will:
Explore how the this binding points to objects based on how the function is called Look into the nature of JS objects and why you'd need to point to them Learn how developers use the mixin pattern to fake classes in JS Examine how JS's prototype mechanism forms links between objects Learn how to move from class/inheritance design to behavior delegation Understand how the OLOO (objects-linked-to-other-objects) coding style naturally implements behavior delegation
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43
Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby
Sandi Metz
4.2
The Complete Guide to Writing More Maintainable, Manageable, Pleasing, and Powerful Ruby Applications Ruby's widely admired ease of use has a downside: Too many Ruby and Rails applications have been created without concern for their long-term maintenance or evolution. The Web is awash in Ruby code that is now virtually impossible to change or extend. This text helps you solve that problem by using powerful real-world object-oriented design techniques, which it thoroughly explains using simple and practical Ruby examples. Sandi Metz has distilled a lifetime of conversations and presentations about object-oriented design into a set of Ruby-focused practices for crafting manageable, extensible, and pleasing code. She shows you how to build new applications that can survive success and repair existing applications that have become impossible to change. Each technique is illustrated with extended examples, all downloadable from the companion Web site, poodr.info. The first title to focus squarely on object-oriented Ruby application design, Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby will guide you to superior outcomes, whatever your previous Ruby experience. Novice Ruby programmers will find specific rules to live by; intermediate Ruby programmers will find valuable principles they can flexibly interpret and apply; and advanced Ruby programmers will find a common language they can use to lead development and guide their colleagues. This guide will help you Understand how object-oriented programming can help you craft Ruby code that is easier to maintain and upgrade Decide what belongs in a single Ruby class Avoid entangling objects that should be kept separate Define flexible interfaces among objects Reduce programming overhead costs with duck typing Successfully apply inheritance Build objects via composition Design cost-effective tests Solve common problems associated with poorly designed Ruby code
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Head First JavaScript Programming: A Brain-Friendly Guide
Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson
4.2
What will you learn from this book?
This brain-friendly guide teaches you everything from JavaScript language fundamentals to advanced topics, including objects, functions, and the browser's document object model. You won't just be reading--you'll be playing games, solving puzzles, pondering mysteries, and interacting with JavaScript in ways you never imagined. And you'll write real code, lots of it, so you can start building your own web applications. Prepare to open your mind as you learn (and nail) key topics including: The inner details of JavaScriptHow JavaScript works with the browserThe secrets of JavaScript typesUsing arraysThe power of functionsHow to work with objectsMaking use of prototypesUnderstanding closuresWriting and testing applications
What's so special about this book?
We think your time is too valuable to waste struggling with new concepts. Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, "Head First JavaScript Programming" uses a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep.
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45
Agile Web Development with Rails: A Pragmatic Guide
Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, Thomas Fuchs, Andrea Schwarz
4.2
Rails is a full-stack, open source web framework that enables you to create full-featured, sophisticated web-based applications, but with a twist... A full Rails application probably has less total code than the XML you'd need to configure the same application in other frameworks. With this book you'll learn how to use "ActiveRecord" to connect business objects and database tables. No more painful object-relational mapping. Just create your business objects and let Rails do the rest. You'll learn how to use the "Action Pack" framework to route incoming requests and render pages using easy-to-write templates and components. See how to exploit the Rails service frameworks to send emails, implement web services, and create dynamic, user-centric web-pages using built-in Javascript and Ajax support. There are extensive chapters on testing, deployment, and scaling. You'll see how easy it is to install Rails using your web server of choice (such as Apache or lighttpd) or using its own included web server. You'll be writing applications that work with your favorite database (MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, and more) in no time at all. You'll create a complete online store application in the extended tutorial section, so you'll see how a full Rails application is developed---iteratively and rapidly. Rails strives to honor the Pragmatic Programmer's "DRY Principle" by avoiding the extra work of configuration files and code annotations. You can develop in real-time: make a change, and watch it work immediately. Forget XML. Everything in Rails, from templates to control flow to business logic, is written in Ruby, the language of choice for programmers who like to get the job done well (and leave work ontime for a change). Rails is the framework of choice for the new generation of Web 2.0 developers. Agile Web Development with Rails is the book for that generation, written by Dave Thomas (Pragmatic Programmer and author of Programming Ruby) and David Heinemeier Hansson, who created Rails.
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Professional JavaScript for Web Developers
Nicholas C. Zakas
4.2
Dispels the myth that JavaScript is a "baby" language and demonstrates why it is the scripting language of choice used in the design of millions of Web pages and server-side applications Quickly covers JavaScript basics and then moves on to more advanced topics such as object-oriented programming, XML, Web services, and remote scripting Addresses the many issues that Web application developers face, including internationalization, security, privacy, optimization, intellectual property issues, and obfuscation Builds on the reader's basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and the Web in general This book is also available as part of the 4-book JavaScript and Ajax Wrox Box (ISBN: 0470227818). This 4-book set includes:
Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (ISBN: 0764579088) Professional Ajax 2nd edition (ISBN: 0470109491) Professional Web 2.0 Programming (ISBN: 0470087889) Professional Rich Internet Applications: Ajax and Beyond (ISBN: 0470082801)
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47
jQuery: Novice to Ninja
Earle Castledine, Craig Sharkie
4.2
jQuery: Novice to Ninja is a compilation of best-practice jQuery solutions to meet the most challenging JavaScript problems. In this question-and-answer book on jQuery, you'll find a cookbook of ready-to-go solutions to help breathe life into your web page.
Topics covered include: - Scrolling, Resizing and Animating Webpage elements - Backgrounds, Slideshows, and Crossfaders - Menus, Tabs, and Panels - Buttons, Fields, and Controls - Lists, Trees, and Tables - Frames, Windows, and Dialogs - Adding interactivity with Ajax - Using the jQuery User Interface Themeroller - Writing your own jQuery plug-ins
All code used to create each solution is available for download and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.
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48
Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
Eric Matthes
4.2
Second edition of the best selling Python book in the world. A fast-paced, no-nonsense guide to programming in Python. This book teaches beginners the basics of programming in Python with a focus on real projects.
This is the second edition of the best selling Python book in the world. Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition is a straightforward introduction to the core of Python programming. Author Eric Matthes dispenses with the sort of tedious, unnecessary information that can get in the way of learning how to program, choosing instead to provide a foundation in general programming concepts, Python fundamentals, and problem solving. Three real world projects in the second part of the book allow readers to apply their knowledge in useful ways.
Readers will learn how to create a simple video game, use data visualization techniques to make graphs and charts, and build and deploy an interactive web application. Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition teaches beginners the essentials of Python quickly so that they can build practical programs and develop powerful programming techniques.
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49
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Erich; Helm John Gamma
4.2
Capturing a wealth of experience about the design of object-oriented software, four top-notch designers present a catalog of simple and succinct solutions to commonly occurring design problems. Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves.
The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in object-oriented systems. With Design Patterns as your guide, you will learn how these important patterns fit into the software development process, and how you can leverage them to solve your own design problems most efficiently.
Each pattern describes the circumstances in which it is applicable, when it can be applied in view of other design constraints, and the consequences and trade-offs of using the pattern within a larger design. All patterns are compiled from real systems and are based on real-world examples. Each pattern also includes code that demonstrates how it may be implemented in object-oriented programming languages like C++ or Smalltalk.
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50
Introducing HTML5
Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp
4.2
Suddenly, everyone's talking about HTML5, and ready or not, you need to get acquainted with this powerful new development in web and application design. Some of its new features are already being implemented by existing browsers, and much more is around the corner. Written by developers who have been using the new language for the past year in their work, this book shows you how to start adapting the language now to realize its benefits on today's browsers. Rather than being just an academic investigation, it concentrates on the practical--the problems HTML5 can solve for you right away. By following the book's hands-on HTML5 code examples you'll learn: new semantics and structures to help your site become richer and more accessible how to apply the most important JavaScript APIs that are already implemented the uses of native multimedia for video and audiotechniques for drawing lines, fills, gradients, images and text with canvas how to build more intelligent web formsimplementation of new storage options and web databaseshow geolocation works with HTML5 in both web and mobile applicationsAll the code from this book (and more) is available at www.introducinghtml5.com.
There appear to be intermittent problems with the first printing of Introducing HTML5. If you have one of these copies, please email us at ask@peachpit.com with a copy of your receipt (from any reseller), and we'll either provide access to the eBook or send you another copy of the print book -- whichever you prefer. If you'd like the eBook we can add that to your Peachpit.com account. You can set up a free account at www.peachpit.com/join http: //www.peachpit.com/join>. Thanks so much for your understanding!
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Object-Oriented JavaScript
Nicholas C. Zakas
4.2
Although object orientated programming is probably not the first thing that programmers think of when they think of JavaScript, JavaScript is not just object-oriented but also incredibly powerful and expressive, putting many design decisions in the hands of those developers who know how to use it effectively. Object-Oriented JavaScript helps experienced programmers understand JavaScript's unique approach to object-oriented programming so they can tackle their problems effectively, and with less code. Author Nicholas Zakas provides even readers with minimal JavaScript experience a deep understanding of the structure of the language.
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52
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Jason Beaird
4.2
Tired of making web sites that work absolutely perfectly but just don't look nice?
If so, then The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is for you. A simple, easy-to-follow guide, illustrated with plenty of full-color examples, this book will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. Good design principles are not rocket science, and using the information contained in this book will help you create stunning web sites.
Understand the design process, from discovery to implementation Understand what makes "good design" Developing pleasing layouts using grids, the rule of thirds, balance and symmetry Use color effectively, develop color schemes and create a palette Use textures, lines, points, shapes, volumes and depth Learn how good typography can make ordinary designs look great Effective imagery: choosing, editing and placing images And much more Throughout the book, you'll follow an example design, from concept to completion, learning along the way. The book's full-color layout and large format (8" x 10") make The Principles Of Beautiful Wed Design a pleasure to read.
Editorial Reviews
"The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is a good book to kick start your graphic-design journey. The biggest benefit that I got from this book is the knowledge to learn from great designs as opposed to just admiring them in a state of awe." - Slashdot.org
"Jason is a great writer, and the book is quite easy to read. It's put together wonderfully, including many full color screenshots and other forms of imagery that make the book a pleasure to read. I'd definitely recommend the book to anyone in Web design." - MondayByNoon
"Jason Beaird covers web design in a way that non-designers can understand. He walks you through all of the aspects of design development from initial meeting to finished product. If you are just getting into web development, this is a must read." - Blogcritics.org
"This is a thoroughly practical guide to web design that is very well written: good technical depth in easy-to-understand language with excellent illustrations and graphics that support the text. For many users it will be the only web-design text they will need. For those who want to further advance their skills and knowledge it will provide a sound foundation." - PC Update
"His "Don't just tell, show!" style makes this book accessible to everyone... It strikes a carefully thought-out balance between describing principles and illustrating them. It is clear and well structured, with practical examples in every chapter." - Mitch Wheat
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CSS: The Definitive Guide
Eric A. Meyer
4.1
CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition, provides you with a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of all aspects of CSS 2.1. Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more.
Simply put, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to separate a document's structure from its presentation. The benefits of this can be quite profound: CSS allows a much richer document appearance than HTML and also saves time -- you can create or change the appearance of an entire document in just one place; and its compact file size makes web pages load quickly.
CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition, provides you with a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of all aspects of CSS 2.1. Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more. Author Eric Meyer tackles the subject with passion, exploring in detail each individual CSS property and how it interacts with other properties. You'll not only learn how to avoid common mistakes in interpretation, you also will benefit from the depth and breadth of his experience and his clear and honest style. This is the complete sourcebook on CSS.
The 3rd edition contains:
Updates to reflect changes in the latest draft version of CSS 2.1 Browser notes updated to reflect changes between IE6 and IE7 Advanced selectors supported in IE7 and other major browsers included A new round of technical edits by a fresh set of editors Clarifications and corrected errata, including updated URLs ofreferenced online resources
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54
Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
4.1
I am not a recruiter. I am a software engineer. And as such, I know what it's like to be asked to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot and then write flawless code on a whiteboard. I've been through this as a candidate and as an interviewer.
Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition is here to help you through this process, teaching you what you need to know and enabling you to perform at your very best. I've coached and interviewed hundreds of software engineers. The result is this book.
Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question, discover how to break down a problem into manageable chunks, develop techniques to unstick yourself when stuck, learn (or re-learn) core computer science concepts, and practice on 189 interview questions and solutions.
These interview questions are real; they are not pulled out of computer science textbooks. They reflect what's truly being asked at the top companies, so that you can be as prepared as possible. WHAT'S INSIDE? • 189 programming interview questions, ranging from the basics to the trickiest algorithm problems. • A walk-through of how to derive each solution, so that you can learn how to get there yourself. • Hints on how to solve each of the 189 questions, just like what you would get in a real interview. • Five proven strategies to tackle algorithm questions, so that you can solve questions you haven't seen. • Extensive coverage of essential topics, such as big O time, data structures, and core algorithms. • A behind the scenes look at how top companies like Google and Facebook hire developers. • Techniques to prepare for and ace the soft side of the interview: behavioral questions. • For interviewers and companies: details on what makes a good interview question and hiring process.
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Professional WordPress: Design and Development
Hal Stern, David Damstra, Brad Williams
4.1
An in-depth look at the internals of the WordPress system. As the most popular blogging and content management platform available today, WordPress is a powerful tool. This exciting book goes beyond the basics and delves into the heart of the WordPress system, offering overviews of the functional aspects of WordPress as well as plug-in and theme development. What is covered in this book?
WordPress as a Content Management System Hosting Options Installing WordPress Files Database Configuration Dashboard Widgets Customizing the Dashboard Creating and Managing Content Categorizing Your Content Working with Media Comments and Discussion Working with Users Managing, Adding, Upgrading, and Using the Theme Editor Working with Widgets Adding and Managing New Plugins Configuring WordPress Exploring the Code Configuring Key Files wp-config.php file Advanced wp-config Options What's in the Core? WordPress Codex and Resources Understanding and customizing the Loop Building A Custom Query Complex Database Operations Dealing With Errors Direct Database Manipulation Building Your Own Taxonomies Plugin Packaging Create a Dashboard Widget Creating a Plugin Example Publish to the Plugin Directory Installing a Theme Creating Your Own Theme How and When to Use Custom Page Templates How to Use Custom Page Templates Pushing Content from WordPress to Other Sites Usability and Usability Testing Getting Your Site Found How Web Standards Get Your Data Discovered Load Balancing Your WordPress Site Securing Your WordPress Site Using WordPress in the Enterprise Is WordPress Right for Your Enterprise? and much more!
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56
Html5: Up and Running: Dive Into the Future of Web Development
Mark Pilgrim
4.1
If you don't know about the new features available in HTML5, now's the time to find out. This book provides practical information about how and why the latest version of this markup language will significantly change the way you develop for the Web.
HTML5 is still evolving, yet browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and Chrome already support many of its features -- and mobile browsers are even farther ahead. HTML5: Up & Running carefully guides you though the important changes in this version with lots of hands-on examples, including markup, graphics, and screenshots. You'll learn how to use HTML5 markup to add video, offline capabilities, and more -- and you'll be able to put that functionality to work right away.
Learn new semantic elements, such as,, and Meet Canvas, a 2D drawing surface you can program with JavaScript Embed video in your web pages without third-party plugins Use Geolocation to let web application visitors share their physical location Take advantage of local storage capacity that goes way beyond cookies Build offline web applications that work after network access is disconnected Learn about several new input types for web forms Create your own custom vocabularies in HTML5 with microdata
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57
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
4.1
Today's web sites have moved far beyond "brochureware." They are larger and more complex, have great strategic value to their sponsors, and their users are busier and less forgiving. Designers, information architects, and web site managers are required to juggle vast amounts of information, frequent changes, new technologies, and sometimes even multiple objectives, making some web sites look like a fast-growing but poorly planned city-roads everywhere, but impossible to navigate. Well-planned information architecture has never been as essential as it is now.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, shows you how to blend aesthetics and mechanics for distinctive, cohesive web sites that work. Most books on web development concentrate on either the graphics or the technical issues of a site. This book focuses on the framework that holds the two together.
This edition contains more than 75% new material. You'll find updated chapters on organization, labeling, navigation, and searching; and a new chapter on thesauri, controlled vocabularies and metadata will help you understand the interconnectedness of these systems. The authors have expanded the methodology chapters to include a more interdisciplinary collection of tools and techniques. They've also complemented the top-down strategies of the first edition with bottom-up approaches that enable distributed, emergent solutions.
A whole new section addresses the opportunities and challenges of practicing information architecture, while another section discusses how that work impacts and is influenced by the broader organizational context. New case studies provide models for creating enterprise intranet portals and online communities. Finally, you'll find pointers to a wealth of essential information architecture resources, many of which did not exist a few years ago.
By applying the principles outlined in this completely updated classic, you'll build web sites and intranets that are easier to navigate and appealing to your users, as well as scalable and simple to maintain. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition is a treasure trove of ideas and practical advice for anyone involved in building or maintaining a large, complex web site or intranet.
Aided by three key elements: object fundamentals, design principles, and best practices, you'll learn how to develop elegant and rock solid systems using PHP.
The 5th edition of this popular book has been fully updated for PHP 7, including replacing the PEAR package manager with Composer, and new material on Vagrant and PHP standards. It provides a solid grounding in PHP's support for objects, it builds on this foundation to instill core principles of software design and then covers the tools and practices needed to develop, test and deploy robust code.
PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice begins by covering PHP's object-oriented features. It introduces key topics including class declaration, inheritance, reflection and much more. The next section is devoted to design patterns. It explains the principles that make patterns powerful. The book covers many of the classic design patterns and includes chapters on enterprise and database patterns. The last segment of the book covers the tools and practices that can help turn great code into a successful project. The section shows how to manage multiple developers and releases with git, how to manage builds and dependencies with Composer. It also explores strategies for automated testing and continuous integration. What You'll Learn Work with object fundamentals: writing classes and methods, instantiating objects, creating powerful class hierarchies using inheritance.
Master advanced object-oriented features, including static methods and properties, managing error conditions with exceptions, and creating abstract classes and interfaces.
Learn about the new object-oriented features introduced by PHP 7 and why they matter for your code.
Understand and use design principles to deploy objects and classes effectively in your projects.
Discover a set of powerful patterns that you can deploy in your own projects.
Guarantee a successful project including unit testing; version control, build, installation and package management; and continuous integration.
Who This Book is For This book is suitable for anyone with at least a basic knowledge of PHP who wants to use its object-oriented features in their projects. Those who already know their interfaces from their abstracts may well still find it hard to use these features in their systems. They will benefit from the book's emphasis on design. They will learn how to choose and combine the participants of a system; how to read design patterns and how to use them in their code. Finally this book is for PHP coders who want to learn about the practices and tools (version control, testing, continuous integration, etc) that can make projects safe, elegant and stable.
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High Performance JavaScript
Nicholas C. Zakas
4.1
If you're like most developers, you rely heavily on JavaScript to build interactive and quick-responding web applications. The problem is that all of those lines of JavaScript code can slow down your apps. This book reveals techniques and strategies to help you eliminate performance bottlenecks during development. You'll learn how to improve execution time, downloading, interaction with the DOM, page life cycle, and more.
Yahoo! frontend engineer Nicholas C. Zakas and five other JavaScript experts -- Ross Harmes, Julien Lecomte, Steven Levithan, Stoyan Stefanov, and Matt Sweeney -- demonstrate optimal ways to load code onto a page, and offer programming tips to help your JavaScript run as efficiently and quickly as possible. You'll learn the best practices to build and deploy your files to a production environment, and tools that can help you find problems once your site goes live.
Identify problem code and use faster alternatives to accomplish the same task Improve scripts by learning how JavaScript stores and accesses data Implement JavaScript code so that it doesn't slow down interaction with the DOM Use optimization techniques to improve runtime performance Learn ways to ensure the UI is responsive at all times Achieve faster client-server communication Use a build system to minify files, and HTTP compression to deliver them to the browser
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60
Designing for Emotion
Aaron Walter
4.1
Make your users fall in love with your site via the precepts packed into this brief, charming book by MailChimp user experience design lead Aarron Walter. From classic psychology to case studies, highbrow concepts to common sense, Designing for Emotion demonstrates accessible strategies and memorable methods to help you make a human connection through design.
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Object-Oriented JavaScript
Stoyan Stefanov
4.1
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62
You Don't Know JS: Async & Performance
Kyle Simpson
4.1
No matter how much experience you have with JavaScript, odds are you don't fully understand the language. As part of the "You Don't Know JS" series, this concise yet in-depth guide focuses on new asynchronous features and performance techniques--including Promises, generators, and Web Workers--that let you create sophisticated single-page web applications and escape callback hell in the process.
Like other books in this series, You Don't Know JS: Async & Performance dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this knowledge, you can become a true JavaScript master.
With this book you will:
Explore old and new JavaScript methods for handling asynchronous programming Understand how callbacks let third parties control your program's execution Address the "inversion of control" issue with JavaScript Promises Use generators to express async flow in a sequential, synchronous-looking fashion Tackle program-level performance with Web Workers, SIMD, and asm.js Learn valuable resources and techniques for benchmarking and tuning your expressions and statements
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63
Python Crash Course, 3rd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
Eric Matthes
4.1
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64
The Non-Designer's Design Book (Non Designer's Design Book)
Robin Williams
4.1
A lot has happened in the world of digital design since the first edition of this title was published, but one thing remains true: There is an ever-growing number of people attempting to design everything from newsletters to advertisements with no formal training. This book is the one place they can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help from trusted design instructor Robin Williams. This revised and expanded classic includes a new chapter on designing with type, more quizzes and exercises, updated projects, and new visual and typographic examples that give the book a fresh, modern look. In" The Non-Designer's Design Book, " "4th Edition, " Robin turns her attention to the basic principles that govern good design. Perfect for beginners, Robin boils great design into four easy-to-master principles: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity (C.R.A.P.!). Readers who follow her clearly explained concepts will produce more sophisticated and professional work immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, and illustrations make learning a snap-which is just what audiences have come to expect from this bestselling author.
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Recommended by David Kadavy.
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Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful Web application
37 Signals, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Matthew Linderman
4.1
Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it's a book of ideas. Anyone working on a web app - including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers - will find value and inspiration in this book. 37signals used the Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people (distributed across 7 time zones). Over 500,000 people around the world use these applications to get things done. Now you can find out how they did it and how you can do it too. It's not as hard as you think if you Get Real.
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Recommended by Anop Anthony, Gary Bury, Joan Boixados, and 2 others.
Anop Anthony
Written by the creators of Basecamp (formerly 37 signals), it is refreshingly bull-shit free for a business book. Each chapter is bite-sized — a little nugget of wisdom — usually a paragraph or two and often bracingly insightful. The book addresses the practical challenges of running and growing a product-based software company, and the advice is sometimes terse and brutal. (see 'Start with No", "Have an Enemy", "Always hire a writer," etc.). First published in 2006, Getting Real espoused a fiercely opinionated, common-sense approach to building a software company, rejecting traditional business tropes, offering a new paradigm for a new kind of business. Not only did Fried and Hansson practice what they preached, they were successful too. I'd still recommend this to a young software entrepreneur getting into the crowded technology space today. [source]
Gary Bury
I find it difficult to say I have a favorite business book, there is no perfect book in my opinion, each has its own elements to take away, and each will inevitably have elements that don’t apply to you or you disagree with. Getting Real by 37Signals is undoubtedly a book I refer back to and recommend to others. … was an important book for me, the ideas were defying conventional wisdom and teaching. I’m not a fan of large multi national businesses and the focus on corporate transactions, so to read something that aligned with my small business beliefs and focused on simplicity was gratifying. It was the kind of book that I read thinking, ‘yes, this is what I’ve been thinking all along, but never been able to vocalise’. [source]
Joan Boixados
As a developer and bootstrapper I must recommend Getting Real by the guys at 37signals. It’s a compilation of articles on how to create a successful web applications by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. Straight to the point, matching the bootstrapping culture they preach and apply. I deeply admire what they have accomplished and their message really resonates with my values. [source]
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66
Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles
Ethan Marcotte
4.1
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67
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag
4.1
Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites.
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68
You Don't Know JS: ES6 & Beyond
Kyle Simpson
4.1
No matter how much experience you have with JavaScript, odds are you don't fully understand the language. As part of the "You Don't Know JS" series, this compact guide focuses on new features available in ECMAScript 6 (ES6), the latest version of the standard upon which JavaScript is built.
Like other books in this series, You Don't Know JS: ES6 & Beyond dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers either avoid or know nothing about. Armed with this knowledge, you can achieve true JavaScript mastery.
With this book, you will:
Learn new ES6 syntax that eases the pain points of common programming idioms Organize code with iterators, generators, modules, and classes Express async flow control with Promises combined with generators Use collections to work more efficiently with data in structured ways Leverage new API helpers, including Array, Object, Math, Number, and String Extend your program's capabilities through meta programming Preview features likely coming to JS beyond ES6
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69
Mobile First
Luke Wroblewski
4.1
Our industry’s long wait for the complete, strategic guide to mobile web design is finally over. Former Yahoo! design architect and co-creator of Bagcheck Luke Wroblewski knows more about mobile experience than the rest of us, and packs all he knows into this entertaining, to-the-point guidebook. Its data-driven strategies and battle tested techniques will make you a master of mobile—and improve your non-mobile design, too!
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70
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Martin Fowler
4.1
Fully Revised and Updated-Includes New Refactorings and Code Examples"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." --M. Fowler (1999) For more than twenty years, experienced programmers worldwide have relied on Martin Fowler's Refactoring to improve the design of existing code and to enhance software maintainability, as well as to make existing code easier to understand. This eagerly awaited new edition has been fully updated to reflect crucial changes in the programming landscape. Refactoring, Second Edition, features an updated catalog of refactorings and includes JavaScript code examples, as well as new functional examples that demonstrate refactoring without classes. Like the original, this edition explains what refactoring is; why you should refactor; how to recognize code that needs refactoring; and how to actually do it successfully, no matter what language you use. Understand the process and general principles of refactoring Quickly apply useful refactorings to make a program easier to comprehend and change Recognize "bad smells" in code that signal opportunities to refactor Explore the refactorings, each with explanations, motivation, mechanics, and simple examples Build solid tests for your refactorings Recognize tradeoffs and obstacles to refactoring Includes free access to the canonical web edition, with even more refactoring resources. (See inside the book for details about how to access the web edition.)
This is next on my list of technical books to read! Refactoring is one of two programming books that I’ve read multiple times (the other is Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns), and I’m due for another reading. What perfect time then to dive into Martin Fowler’s long anticipated 2nd edition, now using JavaScript rather than Java for the code examples. Like the stoic books, I read Refactoring and that Smalltalk book again and again not because I’m going to learn something new, per se, but because I want to be reminded about what I already know. And what better time to reread than just as we’re kicking off a new major project that needs a fresh architectural foundation. Also, these two books just remind every time of how much I love the craft of programming. It’s not just having the programs, it’s not just solving problems, it’s simply using my hands and head to program that in and of itself is sublime. [source]
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71
Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems
Aurélien Géron
4.1
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72
Dom Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model
Jeremy Keith
4.1
This book deals with a programming language, but it isn't intended for programmers. This is a book for web designers. Specifically, this book is intended for standards-aware designers who are comfortable using CSS and XHTML. If that sounds like you, read on... This book is made up of equal parts code and concepts. Don't be frightened by the code: I know it might look intimidating at first, but once you've grasped the concepts behind the code, you'll find yourself reading and writing in a new language. Learning a programming language might seem like a scary prospect, but it needn't be. DOM Scripting might appear to be more verbose than, say, CSS, but once you've got the hang of the syntax, you'll find yo- self armed with a powerful web development tool. In any case, the code is there simply to illustrate the concepts. I'll let you in on a secret: nobody memorizes all the syntax and keywords that are part and parcel of any programming language. That's what reference books are for. This isn't a reference book. I'm going to cover the bare minimum of syntax required to get up and running with JavaScript. I'm really going to focus on the ideas behind DOM Scripting. A lot of these ideas might already be familiar to you: graceful degradation, progressive enhancement, and user-centered design are important concepts in any aspect of front-end web development.
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73
HTTP: The Definitive Guide
David Gourley
4.1
Behind every web transaction lies the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) --- the language of web browsers and servers, of portals and search engines, of e-commerce and web services. Understanding HTTP is essential for practically all web-based programming, design, analysis, and administration.While the basics of HTTP are elegantly simple, the protocol's advanced features are notoriously confusing, because they knit together complex technologies and terminology from many disciplines. This book clearly explains HTTP and these interrelated core technologies, in twenty-one logically organized chapters, backed up by hundreds of detailed illustrations and examples, and convenient reference appendices. HTTP: The Definitive Guide explains everything people need to use HTTP efficiently -- including the "black arts" and "tricks of the trade" -- in a concise and readable manner.In addition to explaining the basic HTTP features, syntax and guidelines, this book clarifies related, but often misunderstood topics, such as: TCP connection management, web proxy and cache architectures, web robots and robots.txt files, Basic and Digest authentication, secure HTTP transactions, entity body processing, internationalized content, and traffic redirection.Many technical professionals will benefit from this book. Internet architects and developers who need to design and develop software, IT professionals who need to understand Internet architectural components and interactions, multimedia designers who need to publish and host multimedia, performance engineers who need to optimize web performance, technical marketing professionals who need a clear picture of core web architectures and protocols, as well as untold numbers of students and hobbyists will all benefit from the knowledge packed in this volume.There are many books that explain how to use the Web, but this is the one that explains how the Web works. Written by experts with years of design and implementation experience, this book is the definitive technical bible that describes the "why" and the "how" of HTTP and web core technologies. HTTP: The Definitive Guide is an essential reference that no technically-inclined member of the Internet community should be without.
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74
The Elements of Content Strategy
Erin Kissane
4.1
Content strategy is the web’s hottest new thing. But where did it come from? And why does it matter? And what does the content renaissance mean for you? This brief guide explores content strategy’s roots, and quickly and expertly demonstrates not only how it’s done, but how you can do it well. A compelling read for both experienced content strategists and those making the transition from other fields.
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75
HTML5: The Missing Manual
Matthew MacDonald
4.1
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.
The important stuff you need to know:
Structure web pages in a new way. Learn how HTML5 helps make web design tools and search engines work smarter.
Add audio and video without plugins. Build playback pages that work in every browser.
Draw with Canvas. Create shapes, pictures, text, and animation—and make them interactive.
Go a long way with style. Use CSS3 and HTML5 to jazz up your pages and adapt them for mobile devices.
Build web apps with rich desktop features. Let users work with your app offline, and process user-selected files in the browser.
Create location-aware apps. Write geolocation applications directly in the browser.
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76
Git for Humans (A Book Apart #17)
David Demaree
4.1
"Git’s model of version control makes it indispensable for collaborating on digital projects of all stripes. Get situated with Git as David Demaree guides you through the command-line workflow, the nuances of repositories and branches, the elements of a solid commit message, and more. Pick up common version-tracking tasks, along with advice on trickier scenarios. You’ll learn how to put Git to work for you—and work better with your team." - Mandy Brown
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Recommended by Jason Santa Maria.
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77
Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
Sam Newman
4.1
Distributed systems have become more fine-grained in the past 10 years, shifting from code-heavy monolithic applications to smaller, self-contained microservices. But developing these systems brings its own set of headaches. With lots of examples and practical advice, this book takes a holistic view of the topics that system architects and administrators must consider when building, managing, and evolving microservice architectures.
Microservice technologies are moving quickly. Author Sam Newman provides you with a firm grounding in the concepts while diving into current solutions for modeling, integrating, testing, deploying, and monitoring your own autonomous services. You'll follow a fictional company throughout the book to learn how building a microservice architecture affects a single domain.
Discover how microservices allow you to align your system design with your organization's goals Learn options for integrating a service with the rest of your system Take an incremental approach when splitting monolithic codebases Deploy individual microservices through continuous integration Examine the complexities of testing and monitoring distributed services Manage security with user-to-service and service-to-service models Understand the challenges of scaling microservice architectures
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78
A Smarter Way to Learn HTML & CSS: Learn it faster. Remember it longer.
Mark Myers
4.1
The ultimate learn-by-doing approach. Short chapters are paired with free interactive online exercises to teach the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. Written for beginners, useful for experienced developers who want to sharpen their skills. Prepares the reader to code a website of medium complexity. The learner spends two to three times as long practicing as he does reading. Based on cognitive research showing that retention increases 400 percent when learners are challenged to retrieve the information they just read. Explanations are in plain, nontechnical English that people of all backgrounds can readily understand. With ample coding examples and illustrations.
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79
Learning jQuery
Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg
4.1
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.
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80
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People
Susan Weinschenk
4.1
We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you'll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.
Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as:
What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen? What makes memories stick? What is more important, peripheral or central vision? How can you predict the types of errors that people will make? What is the limit to someone's social circle? How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step? What line length for text is best? Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.
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Recommended by Jane Pyle.
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81
Learning Web App Development
Semmy Purewal
4.1
Web application development comes in many different styles, making it hard for learners to figure out which path they should explore. Learning Web Application Development provides a foundation, introducing readers to the major components of client- and server-side web application development and demonstrates commonly used frameworks.
Uses a single programming language—JavaScript—for the client, the server, and the data storage solution Includes a section on "mental models" in each chapter. These sections explicitly outline, through images and text, what goes through a programmer’s head while he/she is writing code. Concludes, rather than starts, with the idea of the Model-View-Controller architecture.
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82
Pro Git
Scott Chacon
4.0
Git is the version control system developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. It took the open source world by storm since its inception in 2005, and is used by small development shops and giants like Google, Red Hat, and IBM, and of course many open source projects.
A book by Git experts to turn you into a Git expert. Introduces the world of distributed version control Shows how to build a Git development workflow.
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83
Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design
William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
4.0
Whether a marketing campaign or a museum exhibit, a video game or a complex control system, the design we see is the culmination of many concepts and practices brought together from a variety of disciplines. Because no one can be an expert on everything, designers have always had to scramble to find the information and know-how required to make a design work—until now. Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated is a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary encyclopedia of design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, it pairs clear explanations of every design concept with visual examples of the concepts applied in practice. From the "80/20” rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Occam's razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, every major design concept is defined and illustrated for readers to expand their knowledge. This landmark reference will become the standard for designers, engineers, architects, and students who seek to broaden and improve their design expertise.
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Recommended by Benjamin Humphrey and Jane Pyle.
Benjamin Humphrey
Essentially a reference book for product designers, the universal principles is a smartly curated and neatly presented guide to the key terms you'll come across as a designer, with examples and diagrams. A beautiful book. [source]
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84
Just Enough Research
Erika Hall
4.0
Design research is a hard slog that takes years to learn and time away from the real work of design, right? Wrong.
Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. It’s something every member of your team can and should do, and which everyone can learn, quickly. And done well, it will save you time by reducing unknowns and making sure you're building the right thing, in the best possible way.
In Just Enough Research, co-founder of Mule Design Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of research methods. Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, identify small changes with huge potential impact, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group. You'll be on the path to good research in less time than you can plan your next pitch.
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Recommended by Daniel Burka, Jason Santa Maria, Mike Monteiro, and 1 others.
Daniel Burka
Awesome! @mulegirl's excellent new book, Conversational Design, is now available from @abookapart. My blurb even made it in! "This book cuts through the fluff and buzzwords to get straight to the point..." https://t.co/0oeD5J0OSH [source]
Mike Monteiro
Hello. @mulegirl’s revised, expanded, even more good edition of the world’s best research book, Just Enough Research, dropped today. Buy it for yourself, or buy it for everyone in your company, and you’ll make better things. https://t.co/7U4xcCu2ez [source]
Tim Kastelle
“A large corporation is more like Australia: it’s impossible to see the whole landscape at once and there are so many things capable of maiming or killing you.” Just Enough Research by @mulegirl is a fantastic book - highly recommended. https://t.co/t11yOVeqNc [source]
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85
Head First PHP & MySQL
Lynn Beighley
4.0
If you're ready to create web pages more complex than those you can build with HTML and CSS, Head First PHP & MySQL is the ultimate learning guide to building dynamic, database-driven websites using PHP and MySQL. Packed with real-world examples, this book teaches you all the essentials of server-side programming, from the fundamentals of PHP and MySQL coding to advanced topics such as form validation, session IDs, cookies, database queries and joins, file I/O operations, content management, and more.
Head First PHP & MySQL offers the same visually rich format that's turned every title in the Head First series into a bestseller, with plenty of exercises, quizzes, puzzles, and other interactive features to help you retain what you've learned.
Use PHP to transform static HTML pages into dynamic web sites Create and populate your own MySQL database tables, and work with data stored in files Perform sophisticated MySQL queries with joins, and refine your results with LIMIT and ORDER BY Use cookies and sessions to track visitors' login information and personalize the site for users Protect your data from SQL injection attacks Use regular expressions to validate information on forms Dynamically display text based on session info and create images on the fly Pull syndicated data from other sites using PHP and XML Throughout the book, you'll build sophisticated examples -- including a mailing list, a job board, and an online dating site -- to help you learn how to harness the power of PHP and MySQL in a variety of contexts. If you're ready to build a truly dynamic website, Head First PHP & MySQL is the ideal way to get going.
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86
Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement
Aaron Gustafson
4.0
Building an elegant, functional website requires more than just knowing how to code. In Adaptive Web Design, Second Edition, you’ll learn how to use progressive enhancement to build websites that won’t break, work anywhere, are accessible by anyone—on any device, and are designed to work well into the future.
Adaptive Web Design, Second Edition goes beyond the first edition to frame even more of the web design process in the lens of progressive enhancement. You will learn how content strategy, UX, HTML, CSS, responsive web design, JavaScript, server-side programming, and performance optimization all come together in the service of users on whatever device they happen to use to access the Web.
Understanding progressive enhancement will make you a better web professional, whether you’re a content strategist, information architect, UX designer, visual designer, front-end developer, back-end developer, or project manager. It will enable you to visualize experience as a continuum and craft interfaces that are capable of reaching more users while simultaneously costing less money to develop. When you've mastered the tenets and concepts in this book, you will see the Web in a whole new way—like Neo seeing the Matrix. You will gain Web design superpowers and become invaluable to your employer, clients, and the Web as a whole.
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Recommended by Veerle Pieters.
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87
Fluent Python: Clear, Concise, and Effective Programming
Luciano Ramalho
4.0
Python's simplicity lets you become productive quickly, but this often means you aren't using everything it has to offer. With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how to write effective, idiomatic Python code by leveraging its best and possibly most neglected features. Author Luciano Ramalho takes you through Python's core language features and libraries, and shows you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable at the same time.
Many experienced programmers try to bend Python to fit patterns they learned from other languages, and never discover Python features outside of their experience. With this book, those Python programmers will thoroughly learn how to become proficient in Python 3.
This book covers:
Python data model: understand how special methods are the key to the consistent behavior of objects
Data structures: take full advantage of built-in types, and understand the text vs bytes duality in the Unicode age
Functions as objects: view Python functions as first-class objects, and understand how this affects popular design patterns
Object-oriented idioms: build classes by learning about references, mutability, interfaces, operator overloading, and multiple inheritance
Control flow: leverage context managers, generators, coroutines, and concurrency with the concurrent.futures and asyncio packages
Metaprogramming: understand how properties, attribute descriptors, class decorators, and metaclasses work "
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88
On Web Typography
Jason Santa Maria
4.0
Achieving a thorough grasp of typography can take a lifetime, but moving beyond the basics is within your reach right now. In this book, we’ll learn how to look at typefaces with a discerning eye, different approaches to typographic planning, how typography impacts the act of reading, and how to choose and combine appropriate typefaces from an aesthetic and technical point of view. Through an understanding of our design tools and how they relate to the web as a medium, we can empower ourselves to use type in meaningful and powerful ways.
This book will be released Summer 2012.
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Recommended by Jason Santa Maria and Veerle Pieters.
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89
The Well-Grounded Rubyist
David A. Black
4.0
Developers discovering Ruby quickly learn that this elegant object-oriented language is a powerful alternative to traditional static languages like Java or C++. It runs in most operating environments and can handle virtually any programming task you throw at it. Ruby code is clean and clear. Best of all, Ruby is dynamic, which means that it's designed to react at runtime to changes in an application's environment or requirements. And with the new language features in the long-awaited Ruby 2, Ruby has truly come into its own.
The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Second Edition addresses both newcomers to Ruby and those Ruby programmers who want to deepen their understanding of the language. It begins with the basic steps to getting a Ruby program up and running and goes on to explore sophisticated topics like callable objects, reflection, and threading. Whether the topic is simple or tough, the book's easy-to-follow examples and expert author David A. Black's lucid explanations give you immediate confidence as you build your Ruby programming skills.
This totally revised second edition includes coverage of features that are new in Ruby 2, as well as expanded and updated coverage of aspects of the language that have changed. New topics include keyword arguments, lazy enumerators, and Module#prepend. Updated areas include the new regular expression engine, program file encoding, and changes to the behavior of core classes and methods.
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90
Flask Web Development: Developing Web Applications with Python
Miguel Grinberg
4.0
Take full creative control of your web applications with Flask, the Python-based microframework. With the second edition of this hands-on book, you'll learn Flask from the ground up by developing a complete, real-world application created by author Miguel Grinberg. This refreshed edition accounts for important technology changes that have occurred in the past three years.
Explore the framework's core functionality, and learn how to extend applications with advanced web techniques such as database migrations and an application programming interface. The first part of each chapter provides you with reference and background for the topic in question, while the second part guides you through a hands-on implementation.
If you have Python experience, you're ready to take advantage of the creative freedom Flask provides. Three sections include:
A thorough introduction to Flask: explore web application development basics with Flask and an application structure appropriate for medium and large applications
Building Flasky: learn how to build an open source blogging application step-by-step by reusing templates, paginating item lists, and working with rich text
Going the last mile: dive into unit testing strategies, performance analysis techniques, and deployment options for your Flask application
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91
Even Faster Web Sites
Steve Souders
4.0
Performance is critical to the success of any web site, and yet today's web applications push browsers to their limits with increasing amounts of rich content and heavy use of Ajax. In this book, Steve Souders, web performance evangelist at Google and former Chief Performance Yahoo!, provides valuable techniques to help you optimize your site's performance.
Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side. In Even Faster Web Sites, Souders and eight expert contributors provide best practices and pragmatic advice for improving your site's performance in three critical categories:
JavaScript-Get advice for understanding Ajax performance, writing efficient JavaScript, creating responsive applications, loading scripts without blocking other components, and more. Network-Learn to share resources across multiple domains, reduce image size without loss of quality, and use chunked encoding to render pages faster. Browser-Discover alternatives to iframes, how to simplify CSS selectors, and other techniques. Speed is essential for today's rich media web sites and Web 2.0 applications. With this book, you'll learn how to shave precious seconds off your sites' load times and make them respond even faster.
This book contains six guest chapters contributed by Dion Almaer, Doug Crockford, Ben Galbraith, Tony Gentilcore, Dylan Schiemann, Stoyan Stefanov, Nicole Sullivan, and Nicholas C. Zakas.
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92
Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices
Josh Lockhart
4.0
PHP is experiencing a renaissance, though it may be difficult to tell with all of the outdated PHP tutorials online. With this practical guide, you'll learn how PHP has become a full-featured, mature language with object-orientation, namespaces, and a growing collection of reusable component libraries.
Author Josh Lockhart--creator of PHP The Right Way, a popular initiative to encourage PHP best practices--reveals these new language features in action. You'll learn best practices for application architecture and planning, databases, security, testing, debugging, and deployment. If you have a basic understanding of PHP and want to bolster your skills, this is your book.
Learn modern PHP features, such as namespaces, traits, generators, and closures Discover how to find, use, and create PHP components Follow best practices for application security, working with databases, errors and exceptions, and more Learn tools and techniques for deploying, tuning, testing, and profiling your PHP applications Explore Facebook's HVVM and Hack language implementations--and how they affect modern PHP Build a local development environment that closely matches your production server
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93
Get Coding! Learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and Build a Website, App, and Game
Young Rewired State
4.0
Learn how to write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and build your own website, app, and game! An essential guide to computer programming for kids by kids. Crack open this book and set off on several fun missions while simultaneously learning the basics of writing code. Want to make a website from scratch? Create an app? Build a game? All the tools are here, laid out in a user-friendly format that leads kids on an imaginary quest to keep a valuable diamond safe from dangerous jewel thieves. Presented by Young Rewired State an international collective of tech-savvy kids in easy-to-follow, bite-size chunks, the real-life coding skills taught in this engaging, comprehensive guide may just set young readers on the path to becoming technology stars of the future."
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94
Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen
4.0
New approaches for crafting effective sites. This book is a tutorial and exposition of the principles of Web site design. It aids users in building web sites that stand out from the noise of the web and bring them to the content in an effective and efficient way. This four-color book gives substantial critiques of existing Web site designs.
Recommended by Jeff Atwood.
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95
jQuery in Action
Bear Bibeault
4.0
A good web development framework anticipates what you need to do and makes those tasks easier and more efficient; jQuery practically reads your mind. Developers of every stripe-hobbyists and professionals alike-fall in love with jQuery the minute they've reduced 20 lines of clunky JavaScript into three lines of elegant, readable code. This new, concise JavaScript library radically simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.
jQuery in Action, like jQuery itself, is a concise tool designed to make you a more efficient and effective web developer. In a short 300 pages, this book introduces you to the jQuery programming model and guides you through the major features and techniques you'll need to be productive immediately. The book anchors each new concept in the tasks you'll tackle in day-to-day web development and offers unique lab pages where you immediately put your jQuery knowledge to work.
There are dozens of JavaScript libraries available now, with major companies like Google, Yahoo and AOL open-sourcing their in-house tools. This book shows you how jQuery stacks up against other libraries and helps you navigate interaction with other tools and frameworks.
jQuery in Action offers a rich investigation of the up-and-coming jQuery library for client-side JavaScript. This book covers all major features and capabilities in a manner focused on getting the reader up and running with jQuery from the very first sections. Web Developers reading this book will gain a deep understanding of how to use jQuery to simplify their pages and lives, as well as learn the philosophy behind writing jQuery-enhanced pages.
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96
Django 3 By Example: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch, 3rd Edition
Antonio Mele
4.0
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97
Head First HTML5 Programming
Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Robson
4.0
HTML has been on a wild ride. Sure, HTML started as a mere markup language, but more recently HTML’s put on some major muscle. Now we’ve got a language tuned for building web applications with Web storage, 2D drawing, offline support, sockets and threads, and more. And to speak this language you’ve got to go beyond HTML5 markup and into the world of the DOM, events, and JavaScript APIs.
Now you probably already know all about HTML markup (otherwise known as structure) and you know all aboutCSS style (presentation), but what you’ve been missing is JavaScript (behavior). If all you know about are structure and presentation, you can create some great looking pages, but they’re still just pages. When you add behavior with JavaScript, you can create an interactive experience; even better, you can create full blown web applications.
Head First HTML5 Programming is your ultimate tour guide to creating web applications with HTML5 and JavaScript, and we give you everything you need to know to build them, including: how to add interactivity to your pages, how to communicate with the world of Web services, and how to use the great new APIs being developed for HTML5.
Here are just some of the things you’ll learn in Head First HTML5 Programing:
Learn how to make your pages truly interactive by using the power of the DOM. Finally understand how JavaScript works and take yourself from novice to well-informed in just a few chapters. Learn how JavaScript APIs fit into the HTML5 ecosystem, and how to use any API in your web pages. Use the Geolocation API to know where your users are. Bring out your inner artist with Canvas, HTML5’s new 2D drawing surface. Go beyond just plugging a video into your pages, and create custom video experiences. Learn the secret to grabbing five megabytes of storage in every user’s browser. Improve your page’s responsiveness and performance with Web workers. And much more.
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98
Python Programming Language: a QuickStudy Laminated Reference Guide
Robin Nixon
4.0
Created for developers of all skill levels to find the essentials of common operations combined with the fastest reference guide for writing code. This handy 6 page laminated guide is a concise desktop reference to key concepts behind Python logic, syntax, and operation. Expertly written to concisely cover the planning of a program written in Python, assigning your first variables, importing other libraries, formatting output strings, and creating classes. Beginning students or seasoned programmers will find this tool a perfect go-to for reference to those core concepts. This unbeatable value makes it easy to add this reference to your programmer’s toolbox.6 page laminated guide includes:History & Key FeaturesLanguage StructureNaming ConventionsVariables & Data TypesCommon Data TypesType Hints & Static Typing (Python 3.5+)UnionsReserved KeywordsImporting ModulesConsole Input & OutputDisplay OutputConvert OutputControl Print BehaviorStringsConcatenation & RepetitionGet String LengthAccess Characters & SlicesEscape CharactersString FormattingOperatorsArithmetic OperatorsComparison OperatorsLogical OperatorsAssignment OperatorsBitwise OperatorsMembership OperatorsIdentity OperatorsAssignment Expressions (Python 3.8+)StatementsSimple StatementsCompound StatementsExpressions vs. StatementsMultiline StatementsFunctionsVariable-Length ArgumentsFlow ControlBasic if StatementThe if ... else StatementUsing if ... elif ... elseOne-Line if StatementCheck Multiple ConditionsStructural Pattern Matching (Python 3.10+)asyncio for Asynchronous Programming (Python 3.7+)LoopingObject-Oriented Programming (OOP)Classes & ObjectsInheritancePolymorphismMethod Overridingself Type (Python 3.11+)dataclasses Module (Python 3.7+)Generators
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99
Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3
Charles Severance
4.0
Python for Everybody is designed to introduce students to programming and software development through the lens of exploring data. You can think of the Python programming language as your tool to solve data problems that are beyond the capability of a spreadsheet. Python is an easy to use and easy to learn programming language that is freely available on Macintosh, Windows, or Linux computers. So once you learn Python you can use it for the rest of your career without needing to purchase any software. There are free downloadable electronic copies of this book in various formats and supporting materials for the book at www.pythonlearn.com. The course materials are available to you under a Creative Commons License so you can adapt them to teach your own Python course.
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100
Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?
Susan Weinschenk
4.0
"While you're reading Neuro Web Design, you'll probably find yourself thinking 'I already knew that...' a lot. But when you're finished, you'll discover that your ability to create effective web sites has mysteriously improved. A brilliant idea for a book, and very nicely done." -- Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Why do people decide to buy a product online? Register at your Web site? Trust the information you provide? Neuro Web Design applies the research on motivation, decision making, and neuroscience to the design of Web sites. You will learn the unconscious reasons for people's actions, how emotions affect decisions, and how to apply the principles of persuasion to design Web sites that encourage users to click.
Neuro Web Design employs "neuro-marketing" concepts, which are at the intersection of psychology and user experience. It's scientific, yet you'll find it accessible, easy to read, and easy to understand. By applying the concepts and examples in this book, you'll be able to dramatically increase the effectiveness and conversion rates of your own Web site.
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