Best Web Design Book Reviews 2020

When you decide that you need to try your hands at web designing and begin to search for web design books to help you, one of the first things that’ll amaze you is the plethora of books available on the subject. Sifting through the lot easily reminds one of the popular saying “looking for a needle in a hay stack,” though this is more like looking for a particular hay strand in a hay stack. Having seen how much of a pain this can be, we decided to wade in and provide some assistance. After a lot of time spent researching, we found five top authors with web design books that come very highly recommended. These authors have other books written or co-authored by them, but we’ve focused on one from each of them for this review. Each of the books reviewed will give you an insight into what each author offers. You can then decide to get one of the reviewed books or simply look at their other books.

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Overview

PROS

CONS

SPECS

Style

Platform

Pages

Published

Audience

Our Top Choice

David Flanagan JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

David Flanagan is a longtime programmer who has spent the last two decades writing comprehensive web design books for programmers who want to learn or master programming language.

Expertly written. Ideas and concepts are presented in a logical, easy to follow order. In-depth coverage of all relevant aspects of JavaScript.

There’s not a lot of information on the historical progression of JavaScript.

Paperback or Kindle

JavaScript

1096

13 May 2011

Experts

Best Value

Jon Duckett JavaScript and jQuery Book

Jon Duckett is a veteran programmer with extensive knowledge who has written as well as co-authored books on website design for programmers of all levels of proficiency.

Very well written and visually appealing. Content is introduced in intuitive, easy-to-follow steps for beginners. Contains relevant texts for advanced developers.

The cover falls apart after heavy use.

Paperback or Hardcover

HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery

1152

8 July 2014

All levels

Jennifer Niederst Robbins Learning Web Design

Jennifer Niederst Robbins built the first ever commercial website in 1993, and in addition to authoring the popular ‘Web Design in a Nutshell’ she also teaches web design.

It’s written in a friendly style, has excellent visual design for easy and fun learning, provides coherent explanations and a solid web design foundation.

It contains some information that may be out-of-date.

Paperback or Kindle

HTML, CSS and JavaScript

624

24 August 2012

Beginner

Brad Williams Professional WordPress: Design and Development

Brad Williams, David Damastra, and Hal Sterns are experienced programmers who came together to co-author this web design book meant to provide professional help with Wordpress.

Covers the new functions of WordPress 4.1. Provides detailed and in-depth explanation of concepts. Plenty of helpful code examples.

Concepts discussed are too technical for beginner programmers.

Paperback or Kindle

Wordpress

504

12 January 2015

Expert

Steve Krug Don’t Make Me Think

Steve Krug has spent over twenty years as a web usability consultant to a variety of high profile brands like Apple and NPR. He’s also the bestselling author of Don’t Make Me Think.

Entertaining and easy to read. Describes the dos and don’ts of web design. Offers suggestions and has colorful illustrations on relevant points.

Some sections of the book can be a little too obvious for some.

Paperback or Kindle

Web usability

216

3 January 2014

All levels

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Watch Our Web Design Book Review

What is the Best Web Design Book?

There are many factors that will determine which web design book will be best for you. Your skill level and your goal among other things will determine which books you may go for. Having read thus far, we expect that you have a good idea of what you want, so we’ll now go into the review of our five top selection so you can watch out for the content you are looking for. Let’s get started.

Our Top Choice

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is a great book for programmers and has been since its initial publication. This sixth edition continues that trend by providing further vital information in an ever-evolving digital climate. If you want a condensed version of this book with only the most essential parts, check out the JavaScript Pocket Reference: Activate Your Web Pages.

David Flanagan Web Design Book, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages — Available in Paperback or Kindle Format

Features

David Flanagan is a longtime programmer who has spent the last two decades writing web design books for beginner programmers who want to learn programming language. He also writes for the experienced programmers trying to grow and keep up with the constant changes in web design.

David Flanagan’s web design book - JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is a great book for JavaScript programmers and has been since its initial publication in 1996. It’s a comprehensive reference and guide for programmers. This sixth edition has continued that trend by providing further vital information in an ever-evolving digital climate. Some of the offerings of this book include:

JavaScript APIs (Client side)
Core JavaScript reference 5
ClientSide JavaScript reference
ECMAscript 5 and HTML5
Available in Kindle or paperback format
Some rewritten chapters from previous edition
Sections on server side JavaScript and jQuery
125 helpful examples
1,096 informative pages

David Flanagan has written a number of web design books you can also have a look at.

Best Value

Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set combines two separate titles to form a platform of introductory material that utilizes a clear, visual approach to instructing new and advanced programmers alike. If you need something explicitly for beginners, go for the Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Jon Duckett Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set 1st Edition — Available in Paperback and Hardcover Format

Features

Jon Duckett is a veteran programmer with extensive knowledge who’s written as well as co-authored a number of books on the subject of website design for programmers of all levels of proficiency. He’s designed and built several websites for global brands and is a much sought after web strategy consultant.

Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set combines two separate titles to form a platform of introductory material that utilizes a clear, visual approach to instructing new and advanced programmers alike. What this book offers includes:

A set of two books combining two technologies
1,152 informative pages
Available in paperback or hardcover
Very visual presentation
Text, structure, images and links
Forms, tables, useful options
Fonts, the addition of style using CSS, colors
Grids Layout, tables, thinking in boxes and styling lists
HTML5, ftp, Google analytics, and SEO
Perfect information for new developers

It is also available in hardcover.

Jon Duckett has authored a wide selection of web design books that you can check out to find what suits you best.

Learning Web Design is a guide for aspiring programmers which presents HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics in a simple sequence that helps beginners build a solid web design foundation If you don’t mind an older edition at a more affordable price, check out the 3rd Edition of the same title.

Jennifer Niederst Robbins Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics — Available in Paperback or Kindle Format

Features

Jennifer Niederst Robbins built the first ever commercial website, O’ Reilly’s Global Network Navigator (GNN), in 1993, and in addition to authoring the bestseller ‘Web Design in a Nutshell’, she has also been a web design teacher at Boston Massachusetts’ College of Art and Rhode Island’s Johnson and Wales University.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide is a friendly guide for new programmers which presents HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics in a simple sequence that helps you build a solid web design foundation. You also get exercises after each chapter that help you practice skills and techniques learned.

Some of what to expect from this book includes:

Step by step instruction
How to create HTML pages, adding texts, table, links, forms and images
How to manipulate for colors, text, backgrounds, layout, page and even basic animation effects with style sheets (CSS)
Information on APIs, CSS3 properties, new HTML5 elements
Available in Kindle or paperback format
How to create responsive web designs that will display optimally on mobiles
A study of the workings of JavaScript
Creating and optimizing web graphics

If you’d like to see more from Jennifer Robbins, check out her other web design books.

Professional WordPress: Design and Development contains instructions on WordPress 4.1 and provides valuable insight into its primary usage and functionality while illustrating the various concepts and techniques at work. If you want to check out a web design book that focuses on WordPress plugins then go for the Professional WordPress Plugin Development by Brad Williams, Ozh Richard, and Justin Tadlock.

Brad Williams, David Damstra , Hal Stern Professional WordPress: Design and Development 3rd Edition — Available in Paperback or Kindle

Features

Brad Williams, David Damastra, and Hal Sterns are experienced programmers who came together to co-author this web design book. It was written to assist IT professionals, developers and programmers by providing practical, well-informed solutions to problems regularly encountered while working with Wordpress.

Professional WordPress: Design and Development is a highly rated web design and development book containing advanced and updated content for WordPress 4.1. It provides valuable insight into its primary usage and functionality while illustrating the various concepts and techniques at work. This book’s features include:

504 informative pages
Information on WordPress 4.1’s new features
Cutting edge tips for using WordPress
Instructions on how to move old sites to WordPress
Current tools and practices in WordPress development
Information to help you professionally use WordPress
Helpful screenshots
Available in Kindle or paperback format
Examples and codes can be downloaded from the included website

Brad Williams, David Damastra, and Hal Sterns (co-authors) have each written other web design books that may interest you.

Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited is written for all internet lovers. It teaches the principles of information design and intuitive navigation, enabling its readers to think like usability consultants. If you’d love to have the original edition, then here it is: Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

Steve Krug Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability 3rd Edition— Available in Paperback or Kindle Format

Features

Steve Krug is the bestselling author of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability and other books based on experiences gathered after over twenty years as a web usability consultant to a variety of high-profile brands such as Apple, Bloomberg.com, NPR and many more.

Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited is a practical guide written for programmers, non-programmers, developers, web designers and all who love the internet. It aims to help everyone understand the underlying principles behind design and intuitive navigation, enabling them think like usability consultants. The features of this book include:

Principles of information design and intuitive navigation
3rd Edition with current examples
216 pages of informative and fun content
Lessons that are very practical
Mobile Usability
Available in Kindle or paperback format
Plenty of humorous and relevant footnotes
Highly Illustrated

Steve Krug has a few other books on the subject of web usability like this one, so check them out!

How Do I Choose the Best Web Design Book?

In the good old days when the internet was still uncharted territory, all you needed to do was register a TLD (top level domain) a .com in layman’s terms, and then put up any simple webpage and the little traffic there was online would find you. You didn’t have to do much. Fast forward to 2014 when the number of websites hit 1 billion, then 2017 when the number of websites is pushing 1.2 billion and internet users are put at over 3.6 billion people and you’ll surely agree that your website has to really have something going for it to stand out and make an impact.

The number of websites and users has increased the need for search engine optimization SEO as a way of getting your website to the fore. However, before you can even begin to talk about SEO, you need to have a website to optimize. This has become so important that it’s now a very important part of business marketing, with companies spending tens of millions of dollars building and maintaining their websites.

Whether you want to go into web designing as a money making venture or you simply want to be able to pick up your computer and design a simple website whenever you want or need to, this guide will help you find books that will either teach you all you need to know or provide you with the right foundation upon which you can build and achieve your goals. Read a few of these books and soon enough you’ll be clicking your way to your fancy new travel website!

The best web design books are out there for you and we will help you find them.

Price

Web design books are not among the most expensive books, probably because there are so many of them addressing different levels of designers and different aspects of web designing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro level designer, we found reasonably priced books that’ll help you.

From our research, we found that with between $25 and $40 you can get a web design book that’ll add tremendously to your web designing skill. We’re not talking about cheap web design books that are full of fluff; we’re talking about books written by experts who don’t just know their stuff but also know how to pass the information they have across to their readers.

Features

When choosing a web design book, there are just two very important things to consider. The first is your level as a web designer and the second is the aspect of web designing you want to study – JavaScript, HTML, Wordpress and others. Once you have these two sorted, finding the right book will be easier.

There is a 3rd factor, which is not as important though it’s still worth mentioning, which is the format of the book.

So let’s move on and examine these factors.

Construction and Design

There are many platforms on which websites are built today. A lot of websites are designed on CMS platforms such as Wordpress, Joomla and others. Some others are HTML based. Knowing exactly what platform you want to study will significantly reduce the time you’ll spend searching for an ideal book.

Secondly, there are books for beginners, there are books for intermediates and there are books for expert level designers. If you’re totally new to web designing, it doesn’t make sense to get a book that will be discussing concepts that are over your head. A beginner book will take you step by step through the process, introducing new concepts to you in such a way as to make you understand them.

Lastly, you may want to consider your preferred means of delivery. Before this time, most books were simply presented as paperback or hardcopy. Today, you can also get your books as soft copy, on Kindle or online. Decide which will be the best option for you.

Performance and Ease of Use

If you’re a professional level web designer, you’ll likely find it easier to jump into new concepts and understand them. However a tip every person who is new to web designing should take to heart is this: even if your goal is to master every aspect of web designing, take it one step at a time. You can choose to start with HTML and, when you’ve gotten relatively comfortable with that language, you can add others one after one. At some point, you’ll begin to appreciate and understand how they crisscross and interact with each other in websites.

Take it one day and one book at a time and in no time flat you’ll find yourself rated as an expert web designer.

Go back to the start of the reviews

Get the Best Web Design Book of 2020!

Thank you for taking the time to read through this review of five of the best rated web design books available today. We do hope you’ve found the information herein provided helpful. Armed with this information, we hope you can now make an informed decision on which web design book(s) is best for you. With this decision made, kindly go right ahead and place your order.

Our Top Choice

David Flanagan JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

Best Value

Jon Duckett JavaScript and jQuery Book

Jennifer Niederst Robbins Learning Web Design

Brad Williams Professional WordPress: Design and Development

Steve Krug Don’t Make Me Think

Go back to the start of the reviews

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