Recent Additions to the Bookshelf: A Few Web Design Book Recommendations
I’ve written a couple posts on the subject of books I read and collect regarding web design, RIA design and other technology topics. It’s been awhile, though and I have added a number of great books from O’Reilly Media to my shelf. A couple of these, I am currently using or will be using soon in my web design classes at Bradley University. I used to buy books from a lot of presses, but grew tired of quality issues, etc. Typos, factual errors and other things just seem to be a lot more rare in O’Reilly titles than other publishers.
Visualizing Data by Ben Fry ‚Äì This book is a mind blower. At the same time, it’s a real clarifier. Visualizing rich data sets is no doubt a very deep, heady and amazing beautiful discipline. Most books about it float around in cerebral land, never giving you tactical steps you can make to clear up your charts and make your presentation really pop. This book is fairly Processing focused, but the code is close enough that you can see parallels on how you could maybe achieve similar effects in Flash (if you can get around the slightly less powerful Flash player’s CPU/Memory limits for things like this). The Treemap (a sweet visualization technique!) and data acquisition (useful for mashups) sections were particularly cool in my mind.
Designing Gestural Interfaces by Dan Saffer ‚Äì I really think this book kicks ass. Great pictures, some awesome tips on how to storyboard and test gestural UI and much more. This is a somewhat self explanatory discipline once you get deep into it, but the photo reference in it is worth the price alone. Some reviewers on Amazon were pretty harsh about the book not having enough code or something in it, but really, if you want API specific code samples on how to do deep interactivity go buy some books on that specific API. I’d call those reviewers dipshits, but that would be rude. 
High Performance Websites by Steve Souders ‚Äì Not surprisingly, this is pretty much YSlow in book form. Steve Souders was once Chief Performance Yahoo! and is currently web performance evangelist at Google (and one of the chief minds behind YSlow). This book is fantastic and since its a super short read and written pretty plainly, it can often be used to start off client or management conversations regarding misconceptions they may have about website performance. I highly recommend this title for it’s concise writing, inexpensive advice and a clear ROI it brings your sites. I guess he has a new book out that goes a step or three beyond this, but I haven’t picked it up yet.
Painting the Web by Shelly Powers
– This is a dense book, covering virtually every aspect of graphics on the web. From server side image creation to graphic prep. Tips on achieving some contemporary styles are covered, though this content will undoubtedly date the book sooner than much of the rest of this otherwise very fine title. The book does need a second edition, though, covering a bit more HTML5 and hopefully some FXG to become a true must must buy.
Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter 
‚Äì My only non-O’Reilly pick in this list. Why? You gotta love an easy read with lots of pictures and simple points you can actually remember. This is one of them. Not only that, but this is a book you can share with your managers or your marketing folks and not scare them. No code, no psuedo-code, even… Just pure social web design from one of the industry’s brightest minds. Easily worth the 4-5 hour read that it is.
In addition to these titles that have been on my shelves for a few months, I recently added two brand new books that are so far big winners in my view.
Mobile Design and Development by Brian Fling 
– This book is a home run. A history of the mobile space, a great overview of the current mobile ecosystem (devices, providers, OSes, etc), and an entire design and development/implementation guide. Wow. 300 pages of must read mobile content for right now. What happens in 6 months? Well, maybe some of the book will be a little out of date, but the reference info on device targeting and ROI is pure gold.
Designing Social Interfaces by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone
‚Äì If you took the Porter book and smashed it together with Jennifer Tidwell’s excellent book, “Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design”, which is a goldmine of UI help, you would get this book. 100 UI patterns dissected, with images and how and why you should use each one of them all handily indexed. It’s like a print version of Pattern Tap focused on social interaction and devoid of any filler or self promotional crap.
So, there you go, the most recent books I’ve added to my collection. I’m always looking for ones to add to my library, what are you reading now that you would like to share? BTW, I need a Kindle. My shelves are getting full! Hook a blogger up!
Posted on October 19, 2009