This book is a mirror image of the book Web Design with Dreamweaver 8 by the same author – except this book is for hand coders.

A good title for people new to modern web design practices that include:

• CSS for layouts
• Semantic code
• Accessibility in web design

The topics are covered within the context of small usable projects, that can easily be adapted to your own web design work.

Though published in 2005, the material is still relevant and still is a pretty good buy.

Beginners book on using Dreamweaver 8 – but not for beginners to web design.

Web Design with Dreamweaver 8 teaches how to use Dreamweaver to build modern, standards-compliant websites.

This is a great book if you are a web designer (with some experience) ready to take the next step in terms of understanding modern web design methods: as you learn to use Dreamweaver, the author gives concise coverage of various modern web design practices like CSS for layout, semantic web design etc …

Project driven for much of the book, you are guided through a series of common web design task:

• Styling links with CSS
• Laying our pages with CSS.
• Creating and styling forms.

… and much more.

Each project covered, is representative of something you would want to do in the real-world, but not so big to bore the hell out of you …

A good book for anyone who wants to learn how to use Dreamweaver 8.

This book should probably be on any web designers/developers desk.

Web design has changed drastically since this book’s first edition came out … and thankfully Web Design In A Nutshell has been updated accordingly.

As with all of Oreilly’s ‘Nutshell’ books, Web Design In A Nutshell covers each topic in a concise and yet complete manner making it both a great learning title (for people with some web design skills,) and a great reference.

Some of the topics covered:

• CSS – basics, page layout methods, hacks, tricks etc
• HTML, XML and XHTML
• Accessibility
• Web graphics

… and so much more.

Besides the core coverage of the material itself, this book is also packed with great references to web sites and other good books on web design.

Get the book.

The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide

This is the famous ‘PickAxe’ book that Ruby nerds talk about. A very well written book that is concise and to the point.

A COUPLE OF COMMENTS:

This is one of those books that reads very well. I had a hard time putting it down even though the coverage was deep – you’ll learn a lot about Ruby and maybe more about programming in general.

I never give the TOC of a book (that you can easily look up,) but I should mention 2 major divisions:

1. Part 1 is a tutorial that leads you through the core Ruby language.
2. Part 2 goes into the Ruby environment – the tools that you have available with Ruby. There’s a lot and they work well.

There is much more (advance Ruby concepts, Ruby reference) but I will leave that for you to look into.

FINAL COMMENTS:

What can I say … if you are using Ruby or you want to learn Ruby, you need to get this book.

A collection of AJAX hacks (recipes) coupled with intelligent discussions. A good book to buy for anyone interested in AJAX and modern web application development.

The book begins with a great introduction to AJAX and then provides a useful grab-bag of commonly needed AJAX applications.

For example:

• Processing Web forms.
• Validations: credit card numbers, email addresses etc …

What are AJAX ‘hacks’?

AJAX ‘hacks’ are concise code samples that can be used as ‘components (if you will,) that you can plug into your own work.

Besides the usefulness of having a reusable collection like this, you can learn a lot from the ‘hacks’, since each one is coupled with a good discussion.

Some highlights:

• Ruby on Rails and AJAX discussions
• Examination of the open source AJAX libraries like Scriptaculous and Rico.
• The concise and clear coverage of AJAX basics.

As with all O’reilly books, the writing is clear and concise and well presented.

Note: this is not a beginners tutorial … you will need to be able to work with and understand JavaScript.