Our Favorite Books of 2006
December 20, 2006 at 1:45 PM
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With looming deadlines, a web full of articles to read, and, oh yeah, lives to lead, I suspect many of us read fewer books than we buy. Significantly fewer. So, making our staff’s list of favorite web-related books had to begin with some honesty. Which two books, that we’ve really and truly read this year, were our favorites, regardless of publication date?
- My (Carolyn Wood’s) first choice is the recently published PHP Solutions by David Powers. My understanding of PHP is limited. I wanted a book that could help me make sites more dynamic—painlessly, and PHP Solutions filled the bill. I’m still reading it but I'm already using his “solutions” on sites.
- Nick Finck recommends Mobile Interaction Design by Matt Jones and Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for Print and New Media Designers by Curt Cloninger.
- Kerri Hicks enjoyed Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence and Chris Heilmann’s Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax.
- Tiff Fehr seconds the vote for Tufte and adds The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun.
- Matthew Pennell has been recommending Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery (also on my list of favorites) all year, and he thought The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture and Type by Alexander White was very good.
- Finally, Walker Hamilton enjoyed Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, and Pragmatic Version Control - Using Subversion, which he says “made subversion that much more enthralling.” Was he winking when he said that?
What are your favorites from 2006?
Comments
I second CSS Mastery and also Agile Web Development With Rails.
Well as I am trying to learn more XSLT and Ruby on Rails for the pure fun of it, it has to be Beginning XSLT by Jenni Tennison and Agile Web Development with Rails. I'm also a fan of CSS Mastery and depending on my Christmas Presents this year, I hope to add Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design
Looking beyond tech and more at design, I really enjoyed Type: The Secret History of Letters.
I've bought stacks of tech books this year, but so far they all remain unread. Hopefully I'll get a chance over the holidays. They include: Transcending CSS Communicating Design Designing Interfaces Designing for Interaction PPK on JavaScript and obviously I'd highly recommend CSS Mastery and DOM Scripting
I've read quite a few books this year, and they've all been good, but the ones I treasure are those that I find myself picking up all the time: ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook by Joey Lott, Darron Schall and Keith Peters, and DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith. Obviously, I'm delighted to find my own book, PHP Solutions, at the top of Carolyn's list.
Yes, Jeremy Keith's book is staring at me from my bookshelf, and so is Communicating Design, which I've only read parts of so far. I'm anxious to read both of those and Andy Clarke's as well, which I've been drooling over but haven't had time yet to sit down and read cover to cover. David Powers! Hey, thanks for a great book!
In 1996 I started reading a magazine (now defunct) called Critique Magazine, byline "The Magazine of Graphic Design Thinking". It was a short-lived publication, the self-funded brainchild of designer Marty Neumeier, who saw that the new breed of digital-based graphics designers had lost touch with the history and mindful practice of the craft. So he launched this magazine. I belatedly acquired all the back issues I had missed, and started reading them again last night. This is still my favorite design magazine of all time, because it's about Design Thinking. It's particularly interesting to look back at it now because it was born in that time just as the Internet was being superheated into the bubble that would burst in 2001. The issues are still relevant, and knowing what has happened between now and 10 years ago makes the reading particularly interesting. The design writing is just superb. If you can get hold of some copies, by all means do so. If I were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one design resource with me, it would be my trove of back issues.
As a new web developer, i've neglected backend coding until recently. I was recommended PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson . A great read for an introduction in the world of PHP and MySQL.
Woah. I just read Night Watch in something like 3 days. It was so cool. And so much better than the movie.
I picked up an enormous pile of books this year and read ones picked up from previous years. Since I am away from my library I am pulling out of memory. Everyware was a wonderful book that matches much of my own Hippocratic oath (do no harm) approach to development and opened my eyes with new shadings of understanding. A couple Ajax and JavaScript books really were helpful: Ajax Patterns by Michael Mahemoff was a great find for explaining the various Ajax interface and interaction options (particularly the when and how to best use them) and Christian Heilmann's Beginning JavaScript with DOM scripting and Ajax is a wonderful introduction to JavaScript and Ajax (the updated Visual QuickStart Guide for JavaScript and Ajax for the Web by Dori Smith and Tom Negrino is a great addition for those learning and honing their skills). The two that really stand out for me this year, as they have greatly impressed me and got me thinking clearly across many design and development fronts are Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke and Brilliant Orange by David Winner. Transcending CSS is the most beautiful web design book I have run across, but puts in print many ideas and frameworks for development that I have been using for years. This book inspires and guides like no other. It is a great book for those visual designers that have been frustrated with web standards design approaches, as it opens the floodgates for innovation and understanding. Brilliant Orange is an older book and not about web design, but focusses on football (soccer) in the Netherlands. Well, it tethers Dutch football to architecture, social change, design, art, engineering, and Dutch culture. It brings to mind how interrelated all of these aspects of life are and how as designers and developers we need to be conscious of these elements and their relationships to people. It focusses of the Dutch use of space with form and function. This was the most influential portion of the book as it directly relates to web work in that we need to build for flexibility with a solid foundation of understanding. As the Dutch football teams create space and adapt to their confines, their approach opens up opportunities for succeeding. The confines of the football field are released and seemingly create more space than existed before.
I second (or am I third) the books DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith and CSS Mastery by Andy Budd. Both are excellent books but not on my bookshelf. Instead I keep them close by on my desk for quick reference. Being more a developer than a designer I tend to lean toward the coding books. These days it's all JavaScript and AJAX. For this source I'd pick almost any book from SitePoint.com http://www.sitepoint.com/books/. I started on the PHP Anthology books a few years ago and really like they way they are put together. What can I say. I'm a sucker. Every time they email me about the latest publishing I give them money. Paul
