100 Best Web Development Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best web development books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
In this 3rd edition, Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic-–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.
If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web... more
Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] Don't Make Me Think. (Source)
Nicolae AndronicI’m a technical guy. I studied the IT field and did software development for a long time until I discovered the business world. So the path for me is to slowly adapt from the clear, technical world, to the fuzzy, way more complex, business world. All the books that I recommend help this transition. “Don’t Make Me Think” - Steve Krug: for seeing software with the eyes of the user. (Source)
Nick GanjuAbout usability and making software and user interfaces that are friendly to people. (Source)
• Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s... more
Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript... more
Auston BunsenI’m actually a self-taught programmer, so these books have really helped me with practical skills that I could put to use & yield results. The return on investment for these kinds of books is off the charts for me! (Source)
Hadley WickhamThis book is about the craft of software development, and thinking about how to produce good code. (Source)
This full-color book adopts a visual approach to teaching JavaScript & jQuery, showing you how to make web pages more interactive and interfaces more intuitive through the use of inspiring code examples, infographics, and photography. The content assumes no previous programming experience, other than knowing how to create a basic web page in HTML & CSS. You'll learn how to achieve techniques seen on many popular websites (such as adding animation, tabbed panels, content sliders, form validation, interactive galleries, and sorting... more
Eloquent JavaScript dives into the JavaScript language to show programmers how to write elegant, effective JavaScript code. Like any good programming book, Eloquent JavaScript begins with fundamentals--variables, control structures, functions, and data structures--then moves on to complex topics like object-oriented programming and regular expressions. This third edition introduces new features covering the 2017 version of... more
Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?
Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without... more
Matt MullenwegHooked gives you the blueprint for the next generation of products. Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will. (Source)
Tee-Ming ChewHooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. It changed the way I think about product and helps you to be hyper focused on what matters rather than what is cool for your users. (Source)
Irina MarinescuAlready a classic about how to build successful products. Also, retention is a priority goal for any Product Manager, but you can't have retention if you are not setting a good engagement rate. It was a great starting point for me as part of my first startup and continues to help me today as acquired knowledge about user behavior. (Source)
Each chapter provides exercises to help you learn various techniques and short quizzes to make sure you understand key concepts.
This thoroughly revised edition is ideal for students and professionals of all backgrounds and skill... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Build interactive, data-driven websites with the potent combination of open source technologies and web standards, even if you have only basic HTML knowledge. In this update to this popular hands-on guide, you’ll tackle dynamic web programming with the latest versions of today’s core technologies: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, and key jQuery libraries.
Web designers will learn how to use these technologies together and pick up valuable web programming practices along the way—including how to optimize websites for mobile devices. At the end of the book, you’ll put...
Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship . Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code on the fly into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and... more
The important stuff you need to know:
Start with the basics. Write CSS-friendly HTML, including the HTML5 tags... more
The talks that spawned this book have been top-rated by attendees in every conference they were presented, and praised in industry media such as ."net" magazine.Get information you won't find in any other bookLearn through small, easily digestible chaptersHelps you understand CSS more deeply so you can improve... more
It’s easy to learn parts of JavaScript, but much harder to learn it completely—or even sufficiently—whether you’re new to the language or have used it for years. With the "You Don’t Know JS" book series, you’ll get a more complete understanding of JavaScript, including trickier parts of the language that many experienced JavaScript programmers simply avoid.
The series’ first book, Up & Going, provides the necessary background for those of you with limited programming experience. By learning the basic building blocks of programming, as well as JavaScript’s core...
moreHTML & CSS covers structure, text, links, images, tables, forms, useful options, adding style with CSS, fonts, colors, thinking in boxes, styling lists and tables, layouts, grids, and even SEO, Google... more
In this brilliant and entertaining user’s guide, Jeremy Keith cuts to the chase, with crisp, clear, practical examples, and his patented twinkle and charm. less
Author Ilya Grigorik, a web performance engineer at Google, demonstrates performance optimization best practices for TCP, UDP, and TLS protocols, and explains unique wireless and mobile network optimization requirements.... more
Like other books in the "You Don't Know JS" series, Scope and Closures dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The important stuff you need to know: Pull back the curtain on JavaScript. Learn how to build a basic program with this language. Get up to speed on jQuery. Quickly... more
PHP and MySQL are popular open-source technologies that are ideal for quickly developing database-driven Web applications. PHP is a powerful scripting language designed to enable developers to create highly featured Web applications quickly, and MySQL is a fast, reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suited for dynamic Internet-based applications.
PHP and MySQL Web Development shows how to use these tools... more
Scott JohnsonI spent a ton of years doing mostly product management as opposed to software engineering (what I do now). Although I had written code and managed engineers, I wasn't really a hands on software engineer. In the wake of the dot com crisis, when everyone was unemployed, when an unexpected software engineering gig landed on me, the book PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura... (Source)
A reluctant convert to Sass, Dan Cederholm tells how he came around to the popular CSS pre-processor, and shares just what you need to take better control of your stylesheets (all the while working the way you always have). From getting started to advanced techniques, Dan will help you level up your stylesheets and get back to work in no time. less
Marius Ciuchete Pauneval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help... (Source)
Grey BakerI mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems... (Source)
Kaci LambeThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)
Hardboiled Web Design is different. It’s for people who want to understand why, when and how to use the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technologies in their everyday work. Not tomorrow or next week, but today. It won’t teach you the basics of writing markup or CSS, but if you’re hungry to learn about how the latest technologies and techniques will make your websites and applications more creative, flexible and adaptable, then... more
- Plan, organize, and maintain your stylesheets more effectively
- Apply the secrets of liquid, elastic, and hybrid layouts
- Create flickr-style image maps, remote rollovers, and other advanced CSS features
- Lay out forms using pure CSS
- Recognize common browser bugs, and how to fix them
While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing... more
Written by JavaScript expert Stoyan Stefanov -- Senior Yahoo! Technical and architect of YSlow 2.0, the web page... more
Jeff Bezos[From "The Everything Store", written by Brad Stone] “An influential computer scientist makes the counterintuitive argument that small groups of engineers are more effective than larger ones at handling complex software projects. The book lays out the theory behind Amazon’s two pizza teams,” Stone writes. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax,... more
In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Think, "It's not rocket surgery".)
In this new book, Steve explains how to:
more
You can get off the merry-go-round.
It's time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it's time for forward compatibility.
Isn't it high time you started... more
At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun.
You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to... more
Marius Ciuchete PaunQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug “Geometry of Design” by Kimberly Elam “Grid Systems in Graphic Design” by Josef Müller-Brockmann “ReWork” by Jason Fried These titles should be a good start, I think. (Source)
Kimberly Gloria ChoiWhen asked what books she would recommend to youngsters interested in her professional path, Kimberly mentioned Thinking with Type. (Source)
The type system in JavaScript is subject to several misconceptions. Many developers believe that JavaScript has no types, but that's not the case. JavaScript uses a number of types behind the scenes, and has a... more
Successful interaction design requires more than just creating clean code and sharp graphics. You must also... more
Kaci Lambe KaiThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Like other books in the "You Don't Know JS" series, this and Object Prototypes dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with this knowledge, you can become a true JavaScript master. more
This brain-friendly guide teaches you everything from JavaScript language fundamentals to advanced topics, including objects, functions, and the browser's document object model. You won't just be reading--you'll be playing games, solving puzzles, pondering mysteries, and interacting with JavaScript in ways you never imagined. And you'll write real code, lots of it, so you can start building your own web applications. Prepare to open your mind as you learn (and nail) key topics including: The inner details of JavaScriptHow JavaScript works with... more
Topics covered include: - Scrolling, Resizing and Animating Webpage elements - Backgrounds, Slideshows, and Crossfaders - Menus, Tabs, and Panels - Buttons, Fields, and Controls - Lists, Trees, and Tables - Frames, Windows, and Dialogs - Adding interactivity with Ajax - Using the jQuery User Interface Themeroller - Writing your... more
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... more
If so, then The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is for you. A simple, easy-to-follow guide, illustrated with plenty of full-color examples, this book will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. Good design principles are not rocket science, and using the information contained in this book will help you create stunning web sites.
Understand the design process, from discovery to implementation Understand what makes "good design" Developing... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Simply put, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to separate a document's structure from its presentation. The benefits of this can be quite profound: CSS allows a much richer document appearance than HTML and... more
HTML5 is still evolving, yet browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and Chrome already support many of its features -- and mobile browsers are even farther ahead. HTML5: Up & Running carefully guides you though the important changes in this version with lots of hands-on examples, including markup, graphics, and screenshots.... more
WordPress as a Content Management System Hosting Options Installing WordPress Files Database Configuration Dashboard Widgets Customizing the Dashboard Creating and Managing Content... more
If you're like most developers, you rely heavily on JavaScript to build interactive and quick-responding web applications. The problem is that all of those lines of JavaScript code can slow down your apps. This book reveals techniques and strategies to help you eliminate performance bottlenecks during development. You'll learn how to improve execution time, downloading, interaction with the DOM, page life cycle, and more.
Yahoo! frontend engineer Nicholas C. Zakas and five other JavaScript experts -- Ross Harmes, Julien Lecomte, Steven Levithan, Stoyan Stefanov, and Matt...
The 5th edition of this popular book has been fully updated for PHP 7, including replacing the PEAR package manager with Composer, and new material on Vagrant and PHP standards. It provides a solid grounding in PHP's support for objects, it builds on this foundation to instill core principles of software design and then covers the tools and practices needed to develop, test and deploy robust code.
PHP Objects,... more
The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in... more
Like other books in this series, You Don't Know JS: Async & Performance dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers simply avoid. Armed with... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
This is the second edition of the best selling Python book in the world. Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition is a straightforward introduction to the core of Python programming. Author Eric Matthes dispenses with the sort of tedious, unnecessary information that can get in the way of learning how to program, choosing instead to provide a foundation in general... more
Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition is here to help you through this process, teaching you what you need to know and enabling you to perform at your very best. I've coached and interviewed hundreds of software engineers. The result is this book.
Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question,... more
Like other books in this series, You Don't Know JS: ES6 & Beyond dives into trickier parts of the language that many JavaScript programmers either avoid or know nothing about. Armed with this knowledge, you can achieve true JavaScript mastery.
With this book, you will: more
Timur BadretdinovAs for the business book, I can recommend Getting Real, especially if you want to make a web app. The book is easy to read. The best way to read it is to start an application and try to apply as much as you can do. I guarantee you that you learn a lot from it. (Source)
Joan BoixadosAs a developer and bootstrapper I must recommend Getting Real by the guys at 37signals. It’s a compilation of articles on how to create a successful web applications by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. Straight to the point, matching the bootstrapping culture they preach and apply. I deeply admire what they have accomplished and their message really resonates with my values. (Source)
Vincenzo RuggieroQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: Rework, Getting real and Remote - The combo from Fried and DHH. (Source)
The important stuff you need to know:
Structure web pages in a new way. Learn how HTML5 helps make web design tools and search engines work... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Learn to increase the... more
Uses a single programming language—JavaScript—for the client, the server, and the data storage solution
Includes a section on "mental models" in each chapter. These sections explicitly outline, through images and text, what goes... more
--M. Fowler (1999) For more than twenty years, experienced programmers worldwide have relied on Martin Fowler's Refactoring to improve the design of existing code and to enhance software maintainability, as well as to make existing code easier to understand.
This eagerly awaited new edition has been fully updated to reflect crucial changes in the programming landscape. ... more
David Heinemeier HanssonThis is next on my list of technical books to read! Refactoring is one of two programming books that I’ve read multiple times (the other is Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns), and I’m due for another reading. What perfect time then to dive into Martin Fowler’s long anticipated 2nd edition, now using JavaScript rather than Java for the code examples. Like the stoic books, I read Refactoring and... (Source)
Benjamin HumphreyEssentially a reference book for product designers, the universal principles is a smartly curated and neatly presented guide to the key terms you'll come across as a designer, with examples and diagrams. A beautiful book. (Source)
In "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python," you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to: Search for text in a file or across multiple... more
Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. It’s something every member of your team can and should do, and which everyone can learn, quickly. And done well, it will save you time by reducing unknowns and making sure you're building the right thing, in the best possible way.
In Just Enough Research, co-founder of Mule Design Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of research methods.... more
Mike MonteiroHello. @mulegirl’s revised, expanded, even more good edition of the world’s best research book, Just Enough Research, dropped today. Buy it for yourself, or buy it for everyone in your company, and you’ll make better things. https://t.co/7U4xcCu2ez (Source)
Daniel BurkaAwesome! @mulegirl's excellent new book, Conversational Design, is now available from @abookapart. My blurb even made it in! "This book cuts through the fluff and buzzwords to get straight to the point..." https://t.co/0oeD5J0OSH (Source)
Tim Kastelle“A large corporation is more like Australia: it’s impossible to see the whole landscape at once and there are so many things capable of maiming or killing you.” Just Enough Research by @mulegirl is a fantastic book - highly recommended. https://t.co/t11yOVeqNc (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Adaptive Web Design, Second Edition goes beyond the first edition to frame even more of the web design process in the lens of progressive enhancement. You will learn how content strategy, UX, HTML, CSS, responsive web design, JavaScript, server-side programming, and... more
This book will be released Summer... more
Information... more
Explore the framework's core functionality, and learn how to extend applications with advanced web techniques such as database migrations and an application programming interface. The first part of each chapter... more
Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side. In Even Faster Web... more
Head First PHP & MySQL offers the same visually rich format... more
jQuery in Action, like jQuery itself, is a concise tool designed to make... more
Now you probably already know all about HTML markup (otherwise known as structure) and you know all aboutCSS style (presentation), but what you’ve been missing is JavaScript (behavior). If all you... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Second Edition... more
A book by Git experts to turn you into a Git expert. Introduces the world of distributed version control Shows how to build a Git development workflow. less
In particular, Deep learning excels at solving machine perception problems: understanding the content of image data, video data, or sound data. Here's a simple example: say you have a large collection of... more
-- Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think!
A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Why do people decide to buy a product online? Register at your Web site? Trust the information you provide? Neuro Web Design applies the research on motivation, decision making, and neuroscience to the design of... more
Author Josh Lockhart--creator of PHP The Right Way, a popular initiative to encourage PHP best practices--reveals these new language features in action. You'll learn best practices for application architecture and planning, databases, security, testing, debugging, and deployment. If... more
Don't have time to read the top Web Development books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.