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Nettuts+ Approved Web Development Books

Nettuts+ Approved Web Development Books

on May 24th 2011 with 96 comments

Some people say web development books are dead. Why spend $40 when there’s a seemingly never-ending stream of information available for free on the web, via blogs like Nettuts+? Well, there’s absolutely validity to that statement, but the fact remains, nothing compares to curling up on a couch with a fully researched, definitive guide to a particular subject.

With that in mind, we’ve prepared a list of books that we feel are among the best of the best. Nettuts+ approved books!

Jump to a Topic

PHP

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PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy

Author: David Powers

“So why another PHP book? Well, not everyone who uses PHP is a programmer. PHP is the most common dynamic web language used by designers, if their web sites require dynamic functionality, and there are hordes of novice users who want to set up dynamic web sites.”

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PHP for Absolute Beginners

Author: Jason Lengstorf

“PHP for Absolute Beginners starts at the very beginning stages of web programming, showing even the most inexperienced web developer, through examples, how to build a basic content management system. The book dives directly into writing web applications with accompanying explanation rather than explaining elements of the language and then showing examples.”

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PHP Cookbook

Author: Adam Trachtenberg

“PHP Cookbook has a wealth of solutions for problems that you’ll face regularly. With topics that range from beginner questions to advanced web programming techniques, this guide contains practical examples — or “recipes” — for anyone who uses this scripting language to generate dynamic web content.”

JavaScript

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

Author: Nicholas Zakas

“Starting at the beginning, the book explores how JavaScript originated and evolved into what it is today. A detailed discussion of the components that make up a JavaScript implementation follows, with specific focus on standards such as ECMAScript and the Document Object Model (DOM).”

JavaScript - The Good Parts

JavaScript – The Good Parts

Author: Douglas Crockford

“Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that’s more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.”

Object-Oriented JavaScript

Object-Oriented JavaScript

Author: Stoyan Stefanov

“Create scalable and reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries using the concepts of object-oriented programming. This book is for the beginning to intermediate web developer who wants to solve web development problems with smart JavaScript. It does not assume any prior knowledge of JavaScript programming; however even if you already know some JavaScript, there will be plenty for you to learn here.”

JavaScript Patterns

JavaScript Patterns

Author: Stoyan Stefanov

“What’s the best approach for developing an application with JavaScript? This book helps you answer that question with numerous JavaScript coding patterns and best practices. If you’re an experienced developer looking to solve problems related to objects, functions, inheritance, and other language-specific categories, the abstractions and code templates in this guide are ideal — whether you’re writing a client-side, server-side, or desktop application with JavaScript.”

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Pro JavaScript Techniques

Author: John Resig

“This book addresses all the points above in detail – modern browser support (including information on Internet Explorer 7), Object-Oriented JavaScript, testing and debugging, Unobtrusive JavaScript techniques using DOM Scripting, Ajax, creating and using blocks of reusable code, and looking towards the future of JavaScript.”

JavaScript 24 Hour Trainer

JavaScript 24 Hour Trainer

Author: Jeremy McPeak

“This unique book-and-DVD package shows you how to use JavaScript to make web pages more dynamic and interactive so that you can create a first-rate user experience. Packed with expertly written lessons, this must-have book-and-DVD set provides instructional demonstrations on the DVD that enhance your Java Script learning experience through tutorial demos and helpful examples.”

jQuery

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jQuery Cookbook

Author: Cody Lindley

“Ideal for newcomers and JavaScript veterans alike, jQuery Cookbook starts with the basics and then moves to practical use cases with tested solutions to common web development hurdles. You also get recipes on advanced topics, such as methods for applying jQuery to large projects.”

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jQuery Enlightenment

Author: Cody Lindley

“jQuery Enlightenment was written to express, in short-order, the concepts essential to intermediate and advanced jQuery development. Its purpose is to instill in you, the reader, practices that jQuery developers take as common knowledge. Each chapter contains concepts essential to becoming a seasoned jQuery developer.”

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jQuery in Action

Author: Bear Bibeault

“jQuery in Action is a fast-paced introduction and guide. It shows you how to traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax to your web pages. The book’s unique “lab pages” anchor the explanation of each new concept in a practical example. You’ll learn how jQuery interacts with other tools and frameworks and how to build jQuery plugins.”

HTML 5

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Introducing HTML5

Author: Bruce Lawson

“Written by developers who have been using the new language for the past year in their work, this book shows you how to start adapting the language now to realize its benefits on today’s browsers. Rather than being just an academic investigation, it concentrates on the practical—the problems HTML5 can solve for you right away.”

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Pro HTML 5 Programming

Author: Peter Lubbers

“The biggest revolution since Ajax, Pro HTML 5 Programming: Powerful APIs for Richer Internet Application Development introduces the most revolutionary new feature of HTML 5, the ability to build Real-Time Web applications using Web Sockets. “

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HTML5: Up and Running

Author: Mark Pilgrim

“With HTML5: Up & Running, you’ll learn how this new version enables browsers to interact with JavaScript much more easily than before. “

WordPress

Rockable WordPress Designer

Rockable WordPress Designer

Author: Collis Ta’eed and Harley Alexander

“Managing web content has always been tricky, but with WordPress, any web designer can have a flexible, free and powerful CMS to use not just on blogging projects, but on all sorts of websites. In How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer you will learn step by step how to take a straight HTML site and power it with WordPress.”

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

Author: Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr

“There is much to learn about the World’s most popular publishing platform. Digging into WordPress is nearly 450 pages of taking you from your first steps of learning about WordPress all the way through maintaining a site throughout the years.”

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Professional WordPress Plugin Development

Author: Brad Williams, Justin Tadlock, Ozh Richard

“As one of the most popular open source content management systems available today, WordPress boasts a framework that allows you to easily customize and extend it through plugins. This comprehensive book shows you how plugins work, reviews the tools and APIs available in WordPress, and demonstrates how to extend the functionality of WordPress with plugins.”

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Professional WordPress

Author: Hal Stern

“An in-depth look at the internals of the WordPress system. As the most popular blogging and content management platform available today, WordPress is a powerful tool. This exciting book goes beyond the basics and delves into the heart of the WordPress system, offering overviews of the functional aspects of WordPress as well as plug-in and theme development.”

CSS

Hardboiled Web design

Hardboiled Web design

Author: Andy Clarke

“‘Hardboiled Web Design’ offers a fresh perspective on designing for the web — never compromising, always pushing boundaries. It strips markup to the bone and uses HTML5 and CSS3 to the maximum to help make your sites more adaptable to whatever the web might throw at them. “

CSS Mastery

CSS Mastery

Author: Andy Budd

“A book that brings together the most useful CSS techniques in one place, that focuses on real-world browser issues and that helps plug common gaps in people’s CSS knowledge.”

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CSS: The Definitive Guide

Author: Eric Meyer

“CSS: The Definitive Guide provides you with a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of all aspects of CSS 2.1. Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft’s vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more. “

CSS Cookbook

CSS Cookbook

Author: Christopher Schmitt

“Learn how to solve the real problems you face with CSS. This cookbook offers hundreds of practical examples for using CSS to format your web pages, and includes code samples you can use right away. You’ll find exactly what you need, from the basics to complex hacks and workarounds.”

Miscellaneous

Getting Good with Git

Getting Good with Git

Author: Andrew Burgess

“In this book, Andrew Burgess will take you from knowing nothing about source code management to being able to use Git proficiently. You’ll look at why you should use a version control system, why Git is better than the other options, and how to set up and use Git.”

Regular Expressions Cookbook

Regular Expressions Cookbook

Author: Jan Goyvaerts

“Whether you’re a novice or an experienced user, Regular Expressions Cookbook will help deepen your understanding of the tool. You’ll learn powerful new tricks, avoid language-specific gotchas, and save valuable time with this huge library of proven solutions to difficult, real-world problems.”

What Did We Miss?

I’ve undoubtedly forgotten a handful of books, so let me know which books the list should include below. And a quick disclaimer: yes, we’ve used our Amazon affiliate codes above, but that in no way deters from the fact that every one of the books listed above is fantastic. And hey, you help support Nettuts+ when you use these links!

 
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I'm the editor of Nettuts+, and love making the process of building for the web as easy as possible. Also, I'm finishing up my latest book on Laravel Testing! If you want be friends, say hi on Twitter.  

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  • lurker

    What’s the best book to get started in html & css in general? Some of the books I see about HTML5 or CSS3 discuss only the changes from HTML 4.01 or CSS2 respectively. What would you recommend as the thorough foundation books? I mean, I’m not total noob, I’ve read some books about HTML/CSS almost a decade ago. I’m looking for really really consistent book, not a tutorial style, not from the dummies series, not elisabeth castro book (awful), etc. I tried to read several other books on HTML/CSS but I gave up, because those were so inconsistent, that I thought I’d gain better understanding by reading the W3C spec instead. (But I didn’t) So is there a reader friendly version of the W3C specification? :)

  • http://www.webfuel.me Jason

    Afternoon All,
    What a great collection :) might have to buy some new books towards jquery i know alot but not enough :)

    Does anyone know any great books for learning CakePHP? I am going to be using this as my primary framework and would love a book to dig from easy to advanced.

    Jason

  • http://www.logandesigns.co.uk Mark

    Lists like these are really useful because in the past I’ve sat staring at endless rows of books in bookshops and not known which ones to pick. Thanks very much

  • http://stevenstephension.com Stephenson

    When clicking on Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, it goes to CSS Mastery, a good book by the way. Am I the only one experiencing this?

  • Alex Sadler
  • ouch !

    The first php book on you list is a great one.

    here is two great books too.

    PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice.

    http://www.apress.com/9781590599099

    EXPERT PHP AND MYSQL.

    http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470563125.html

  • Brian Meyer

    I’d like to see some higher-level, or rather, less language specific development books on this list. I know HTML, CSS, JQUERY pretty well, but where is the development book that helps drive my dev. process? How do I budget 4 weeks of development time. What cycles should I break it down in. Should 40% of my development be devoted to actual coding, with 50% planning and 10% bug testing? For those of us without enough real world client experience to guide our planning process, I think a book covering these types of topics would be a great asset!

    • Chris Sanders

      That’s a great point. I would love a book on this.

  • Chris Sanders

    That PHP for beginners was hard for me to read the food references weren’t working for me and just made things more confusing than they had to be for me personally. I just started reading the new version of PHP Solutions. I love the OO Javascript book. I just finished it recently, along with the good parts. I have started reading Javascript patterns but I am only like a couple of chapters in so far. I think I may just like the way this Steven explains things in general. His books are pretty easy to follow. Of course I have read Eric Meyer’s CSS Definitive Guide and Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery and the HTML 5 book. Yeah I have read many of the books on this list… Javascript and PHP are the focus right now for me while trying to keep up with the latest CSS 3 developments.

    • Chris Sanders

      I mean Stoyan not Steven.

  • Marc

    I am deeply dissapointed in the suggestion of the PHP Cookbook. This is a piece of text published 5 years ago. The code examples in the book are mostly wrong. The errata is even being supported and actively fixed when I last looked at it (about 3 years ago).

  • dindane

    what about .NET for starts (c#, mvc3, linq) for beginners? I really wanna start with .net but just loosing my way. its so different from PHP , espescially with database connection and retrieval

    • http://www.eatechs.net Eric

      I learned a lot of .NET from ASP.NET 2.0 Unleshead by Steven Walther I believe. I know thats a bit dated now but i’m pretty sure he has done 3.5 and maybe 4.0 by now.

  • http://www.almoste.com Bhawan

    Looking forward for Object-Oriented JavaScript Book. By the way thanks for this great list.

    • Chris Sanders

      It’s a great read. I really enjoyed reading it. Stoyan gets right to the point.

  • Jeremy Green

    You missed out the best PHP book by far, and I’ve seen a few.

    PHP In Action by Dagfinn Reiersøl with Marcus Baker and Chris Shiflett. This is the book which change my direction from the Java route to the PHP route.

  • http://www.meetup.com/bostonphp/messages/boards/thread/10676890 Gene Babon

    Glad to see PHP Solutions is on your list. Currently, the Boston PHP Meetup is using the second edition of this book in our virtual self-study group called PHP Percolate! We have 195 web-developers-in-training participating. While most participants are in the Boston area, we have active members in eight states, as well as, Australia. Will use your list of approved web development books as a starting point for deciding on our next virtual training session starting in the fall.

  • Mladjan

    i would suggest “Frontend Guide” Book URL, an excellent resource for everyone who wants to learn html, css and javascript
    http://frontendguidebook.com/

  • http://tutorial-city.net/ Eduardo Matos

    I think Nettuts should have a permanent list of recommended books on PHP, PHP frameworks, CSS, Javascript, Javascript frameworks, HTML, CMS, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, Django, C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Databases…

  • Tony

    This is the PHP book that I am reading right now, I believe it is the updated version of the PHP solutions book that is listed, excellent book !
    http://j.mp/mM2UMi

  • http://dwiash.web.id Dwi Asharialdy

    i just started to learn JavaScript and i found this “Eloquent JavaScript” book by Marijn Haverbeke.
    It’s pretty damn good book, it’s available online in its site (http://eloquentjavascript.net/) but you can also get the printed edition in the Amazon

  • http://www.crestviewweb.com Sherri

    My background is not in programming. I need a good basic “understanding programming and logic” kind of book, and I want to learn .php.
    There are so many books and different languages out there, where does one begin??
    Thanks!

  • Mike Rosas

    there should be a book about “how all the wires goes” on web development, I mean, yeah, you have php, html, css, javascript, jquery, git and all those other “parts” of web development, but consider this, most of those books are intended for beginer to mid developers, maybe there should be a book that explains “how it all connects” and the “all other options” they have.

    I dont know if php is the most used languaje to work on backend (as I do) but they should know that there is also perl and asp that does pretty much the same to a certain point.

    they should know up front that there are static sites and dinamic sites, that there is a frontend and a backend, that html is for structuring data and css is for styling it and that javascript is for making it dinamic on the frontend by handleling real time events.

    they should also know that they can generate dinamic frontends by taking a request and input it on a coded algorythm that comunicates with a database designed specially to handle diferent kinds of requests such as that one.

    and that they can make use of diferent frameworks to handle diferent tasks such as jquery or prototype that does pretty much the same (I tryed both and i like jquery more).

    and that they can “connect” their websites to other bigger systems by making use of API’s

    and that there are already open source or comercial licenced predisigned CMSes that they could use for their need and forget about “re-inventing the wheel”

    Or that they can reach out to diferent people on diferent media such as smartphones, electronic tablets, netbook, laptops and traditional personal computers and that for each media they should consider how the requested frontend could be interprate it by diferent browsers and even diferent versions of browsers.

    Or that they can take it forward a step when considering concepts as redability, usability and accesability when on the design process.

    and that there is a timeline that shows how our web development skills and techniques have evolved by learning from our mistakes and making the best use of the most recent web technology and people envolvement (web 3.0 and the social network culture comes from some where).

    people should know “how all the wires” are connected with all its components, maybe that way the next generation of developers could have better luck than what we did while understanding whats inside “the cloud” specially for those self-tough.

    something not to deep but also not to vague.

    excuse my broken english

  • http://www.cyberstream.us Eli Mitchell

    What about Secrets of the Javascript Ninja by John Resig

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      Not officially out yet.

  • http://www.techoncept.com Muhammed Awais

    Its a great collection of books covering most of the areas related to web development. I have already gone through a few of these books during my early days of web design. Awesome collection!!

  • http://jammyspeaks.com Saurabh

    What about Build your own database driven website using php and Mysql ?? Its a nice read, especially for a novice like me.

    And could you help with a nice ruby book??

  • http://www.designkanya.com Design Kanya

    This is a great list in itself, ofcourse some are missing in the list.

    I personally prefer ciddling up on my couch with a cup of hot expresso and the ebook version on my iPad. This device has totally changed the way I relish my books, magazines & newspaper now.

    • http://www.designkanya.com Design Kanya

      *ciddling = cuddling
      Sorry about that

  • hurricaneditka16

    Does a ‘netflix’ for books exist? Frankly I don’t have enough in my book budget to satisfy me. Does anyone know of a good book exchange service or something that has these types of books?

  • http://www.jacobbednarz.com Jacob Bednarz

    It would be good to see some Ruby and Rails books on here as I am interested to see what “approved” books pop up for them.

  • aldo

    Hi
    Which book do you recommend me?

    jQuery Cookbook or jQuery Enlightenment??

    I’m a beginner in jquery and javascript

    thanks!

  • http://www.qualispace.com Nirav Shah

    Nice collection books.I can say its library.
    Really useful books.i am planning to buy couple of books. :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/zob.zobi.3 Zob Zobi

    PHP cookbook is a very good book. Authors got a lot of knowedge and explain it with a lot of exemples, clear style ans all possible simplicity, a sign. I’m pleased nettuts make a roundup about this book because it is sub-known and maybe it is the best.

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