Implementation-Oriented Books

Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization
by Andy King

All about response time and how to make it faster (i.e., better). Even broadband users benefit when web pages are faster, and if you have many dial-up users (or traveling users) you have to make response time one of the top priorities for your site. This book tells you how.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond
by Jennifer Niederst and Richard Koman

If you don’t know HTML, there are a million books to learn from. This one is a favorite of mine. The book does go beyond basic HTML 4.0 to explain CSS, graphics formats, and the differences between browsers (“platform idiosyncrasies” as the publisher delicately puts it).

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition)
by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos

Cascading style sheets (CSS) are without a doubt the way to manage presentation design across any medium- or large-size website. For once the blurb on a book cover is right: The authors are indeed “the world authorities” on stylesheets, having been the original leaders of the Web Consortium’s stylesheet project, so this is the ultimate reference for HTML stylesheets. Many examples of the slightly obscure features in CSS show how stylesheets can be used to achieve quite refined layouts and page designs. It would be nice to say that you can pick up CSS from simply looking at examples, but good use actually requires a deeper understanding, as provided by this textbook.

Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing
by Philip Greenspun

Once you have learned basic HTML you will soon outgrow simple page-based web publishing and need a structured publishing solution. This is a great book for understanding the issues in running a large site (or, actually, any sites that do something).

Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines

This is the official style guide from Sun Microsystems. I happen to know the lead author, who is an extremely experienced and talented senior user interface engineer. So the guidelines are sound advice. But the main reason to use the book for any Java project is that consistency is key to usability. Don’t invent your own weird interaction style when you can use proven ideas that users will know from other applets and applications. Also, by following the official rules, you will ensure that users with disabilities can use your interface. There are several other aspects of interaction design that are often overlooked in the heat of fast-moving Internet projects but are still important: Following the guidelines keeps you honest and guards against such design mistakes.