10 Free Online Books for Web Designers
There’s a never ending supply of information out there for us web designers. If there’s something we need to learn, we can find it in one form or another. Sometimes it may be on a blog or it could be in a book. While you may have to shell our some money for a good web design book, there are a number of them out that have online versions that are totally free. Here are 10 you should find very useful.
A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web
A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout.
Getting Real
Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
In order to allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web, is structured to step through the principles found in Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS.
jQuery Fundamentals
jQuery Fundamentals was written to help you understand the fundamentals of this JavaScript library and teach you how to complete basic tasks with jQuery.
Web Style Guide, 3rd Edition
Consistently praised as the best volume on classic elements of web site design, Web Style Guide, now in its third edition, maintains an emphasis on fundamentals while bringing every chapter topic up-to-date.
Access by Design
Access by Design offers guidelines for universal usability, and the online version includes examples and links to related articles and tutorials.
Web Designer’s Success Guide
Web Designer’s Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business. This book gives you step-by-step instructions on how to do things like transition from full-time to self-employment and how to price your services appropriately.
The Web Book
The Web Book contains all the information you need to create a Web site from scratch. It covers everything from registering a domain name and renting some hosting space, to creating your first HTML page, to building full online database applications with PHP and MySQL. It also tells you how to market and promote your site, and how to make money from it.
Dive Into HTML 5
This book seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards.
http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/index.html
This book will help you understand and apply principles to make your products more accessible.
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Jul 26, 2010
thanks for the books
Jul 26, 2010
Awesome thanks !
Jul 26, 2010
The jQuery Fundamentals link is incorrect.
Jul 26, 2010
try this link instead
http://jqfundamentals.com/book/
Jul 26, 2010
Yup, looks like the jQuery Fundamentals link is dead.
Jul 26, 2010
Good list thanks
Jul 26, 2010
Yeah !! Thanks !!
Jul 26, 2010
What are the best 3 to read?
Jul 26, 2010
Theser resources really useful for me, thanks for share
Jul 26, 2010
Great collection, thanks!
Jul 26, 2010
Good post Henry, Please correct the jQuery Fundamentals link. i.e. “l” is extra in the link.
Jul 26, 2010
They should be able to serve us!
Thanks!
Jul 26, 2010
Very informative
Jul 26, 2010
It is a nice collection
Jul 26, 2010
wow, thanks for sharing!!
Jul 26, 2010
Great list, I´ll read them all, ASAP! Thanks!
Jul 26, 2010
Time to get an iPad and read this stuff in pdf to make my webdesign of http://www.smokingcow.com even better! I like the atmosphere of this one “Web Designer’s Success Guide” ! Nice list Henry!
Jul 26, 2010
The list includes a few interesting books, so I will have a look. Thanks!
Jul 26, 2010
Thanks for the resource! Too bad they aren’t in PDF form, but I’ll take it.
Jul 26, 2010
Awesome college and resource
Jul 26, 2010
It looks like I have my homework cut out for me.
Jul 26, 2010
Very good list!
Thanks for sharing.
Jul 26, 2010
THANK YOU!!
Jul 26, 2010
Great Valuable Collection!
Jul 26, 2010
Fantastic. Just what I needed.
Jul 27, 2010
Really important list of books. Thank you so much for the free downloads.
Jul 27, 2010
Hey, thanks for sharing this amazing freebie! This seems to be a nice list of useful resources for me which I am looking forward to getting stuck into. The HTML5 book looks interesting, before I start reading any would you suggest any you enjoyed reading? Thanks again for sharing this with us.
Jul 27, 2010
Wow !! thanks for that collection
Jul 27, 2010
Thanks for sharing these freebies!
Jul 27, 2010
I can’t seem to download “The Web Book”, their download link is stuffed, and yet it seems to always make it into all the “free ebook” articles! Doesn’t anyone check the resources out before publishing them in an article?
Jul 27, 2010
Love this list! Have downloaded a few of them for some light reading on my iPad!
Jul 27, 2010
Thanks for the list. I’ll read at least 1
Jul 28, 2010
Sweet, specially liking the HTML5 book
Jul 28, 2010
Here is a link to the JQuery book in PDF – for those who don’t prefer to fumble through each page of html…. http://jqfundamentals.com/
Choose PDF link from this page.
Jul 28, 2010
jquery book, I don’t see it as a necessary one.
Prefer to avoid it actually.
Jul 28, 2010
Awesome… Thanks for putting this out there, some really great titles.
Jul 28, 2010
This is great!
I have more time than money so I plan on doing all of my own web design. The only hitch is that I don’t know how to do web design, or html, or css. Is one or more of these books the place to start, or do you have other advice?
Jul 29, 2010
Thanks a lot! Good stuff!
Jul 31, 2010
Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one.
If you’re a designer, developer, or content producer, reading A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web will enrich your website design and plug the holes in your design knowledge.
Aug 1, 2010
Good list – don’t forget about ‘Why Design?’ by AIGA: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/why-design
Aug 2, 2010
Awesome collection, but I think Jquery is not a relevant post here.
Aug 2, 2010
Really very useful books. thanks for this nice article, buddy
Aug 10, 2010
Awesome list of books.
Aug 23, 2010
Saved to my favorites
Thank you so much!
Aug 26, 2010
Great list thanks for the resource, amazon books here I come.