Open-thread: Must have HTML, CSS and JavaScript books?

If you were going to help friend get started with front-end web development, where would you start? Which books (or Video tapes / DVDs) would you suggest they buy?

Two of my picks: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan and CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer.

And you?

Published 22 Jun 2007 • Permalink

Categories: (x)HTML, CSS, Web development

Share this entry:

Comments

Karsh said on 22 Jun 2007 at 6:40 am

I’d also recommend Stylin’ with CSS by Charles Wyke-Smith and HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS by Rachel Andrew and Dan Shafer.

patricia said on 22 Jun 2007 at 10:05 am

No doubt it’s been updated but the HTML 4 Bible was unbelievably helpful to me. Hell, it was so good the person I lent it to, up and stole it. long story. Regardless, the book was easy to follow and instructive. As for CSS, for me, it doesn’t get better than Eric’s books. It just all makes sense coming from him.

Elaine said on 22 Jun 2007 at 10:10 am

I like the later editions of the visual quickstart HTML/CSS books as teaching tools.

For JavaScript, I can’t recommend DOM Scripting highly enough. (I’ve been doing this web thing since ‘98, and for whatever reason could never get my head around JS. I read DOM Scripting last year, and it clicked.)

Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites is a classic, as is Don’t Make Me Think — for getting out beyond the basics.

tiffany said on 22 Jun 2007 at 4:12 pm

Ah, yes, Don’t Make Me Think is amazing reading. I liked DOM Scripting, but I think I learned just as much by tinkering with the Mozilla JavaScript documentation, reading blogs, and searching Google.

Elaine said on 25 Jun 2007 at 12:15 pm

Usually that sort of thing works for me — how I learned HTML, CSS, and PHP — but for some reason I had this terrible mental block around JavaScript. The book got me through the block so I could actually comprehend all that other stuff.

Tiffany B. Brown

Open-thread: Must have HTML, CSS and JavaScript books?