I was going to use the adjective essential in the title rather than useful but no one book is essential when it comes to learning web design. There are thousands of online tutorials to help you master the profession and there are dozens if not hundreds of books on all aspects of web-based creativity. Not having access to any one book will stop you from learning your desired skill but some books will greatly assist you in the process. 10 of these such books are below.

1. CSS Web Site Design by Eric A. Meyer

Eric has been involved in online activity since the early 90s and has managed to carve a position for himself as one of the main authorities on CSS – he’s so important to web design that he even has his own Wikipedia entry! (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Meyer)

CSS Web Site Design is part of the Lynda.com Hands-on training series and was first published in 2007.

If you are looking for a resource on learning CSS then Meyer’s Lynda.com publication will guide you through all the main rules of CSS 2.1 including typography, layout, margin and borders and styling for print. The book also comes with a CD-ROM that contains 10 video tutorials and all the exercise files.

Other books by Meyer include Smashing CSS, CSS: The Definitive Guide and the CSS Pocket Reference.

2. High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Frontend Developers by Steve Souders

Steve Souders is probably the world’s authority on the burgeoning discipline of frontend engineering. He really gained this reputation while being Yahoo! Chief Performance officer and has since then spoken at major conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo and OSCON as well as lecturing at Stanford University on this subject.

If you are serious about providing faster page load times on your sites – and you should be as Google now considers this essential – then High Performance Web Sites is a book that you have to read.

It covers all aspects of web page optimisation including how to make fewer HTTP requests, compression, expires headers, reducing DNS lookups, minifying JavaScript and configuring Etags.

3. PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites by Larry Ullman

Ignore the crap title – there is no PHP 6 with 5.3.1 being the latest version – and concentrate on the content written by Larry Ullman who is also responsible for QuickStart guides to C, C++, Adobe Air, Ruby and Ajax. Without doubt this book has assisted thousands of people in their quest to learn PHP as is testified by the four and a half stars out of five as voted for by 61 reviewers on amazon.co.uk.

Many web designers start to become interested in PHP after first mastering CSS and HMTL. Realising that some knowledge of this language is invaluable for creating CMS templates, they then look for helpful tutorials.

It’s best to grab any learning resource at all when it comes to grappling with PHP because if you don’t come from a programming background it’s a steep learning curve.

This covers everything you would expect from such a book: an introduction to MySQL, error handling and debugging, cookies and sessions, security, regular expressions and using forms.

4. Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

Alright so this book always makes these types of lists but there is good reason for that: it remains, ten years after it was first published, the best introduction to usability in web site design.

That author Krug had already worked in this area for years at major online companies such as Apple, Netscape and AOL, and the book was a way of solidifying his knowledge into a digestible format for all to use.

Not only is the advice spot on but the means of presenting his message by using cartoons lets the reader breeze through the 196 pages in the course of one afternoon.

I bet Steve never thought that Don’t Make Me Think! would have such a massive impact as it has done but lets just state this – web designer, if you haven’t read it then you haven’t lived.

5. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan

This book has been republished multiple times by O’Reilly Media since 1996 and with good reason as it still remains one of the key texts when it comes to learning the frontend language JavsScript.

Weighing in at a massive 1032 pages David intended this book to be both a learning guide and a reference.

Programmers often look down their nose at JavaScript and disparagingly refer to is as a scripting, rather then a programming language; however, as the author states in the introduction:

“JavaScript is a full-featured programming language, as complex as any and more complex than some. Programmers who attempt to use JavaScript for nontrivial tasks often find the process frustrating if they do not have a solid understanding of the language.”

If you don’t have any knowledge of JavaScript then put it on your Things To Learn In 2010 list as it is becoming essential as understanding CSS or HTML

6. Learning jQuery 1.3 by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg

jQuery is a ubiquitous presence across the web and it’s a feature of a wide range of web sites.

Created by John Resig in 2006 it is today the most popular JavaScript library with even Microsoft and Nokia announcing that they plan to bundle jQuery into their platforms.

Much of the reason for jQuery’s success is that it is just so god-damn easy to use as the creator stated in a recent interview: “This simplicity is all throughout jQuery. The API is simple, the good documentation makes it simple to start using it, and the covering up of browser bugs makes it simple to keep using it.” (source: http://www.html.it/articoli/johnresig/index.html

Packt, like O’Reilly and Lynda.com, is a publishing company that specialises in web technology and this book, released in February 2009, is one of eight jQuery guides in their series.

The authors run through selectors, events, DOM manipulation, AJAX, form manipulation, plugins and they finish with various examples of the script in action.

7. Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Hands-On Training by Todd Perkins

I hold my hands up here as I’m recommending a book I haven’t read. My version of Flash hands-on training is for MX 2004 and is written by Rosanna Yeung, but this CS3 edition is by Todd Perkins. However, all lynda.com books are of the highest standard, and written with amazingly loving care by their respective authors. If the guide to CS3 is a good as that for MX 2004 then expect a professional introduction to Adobe’s software.

Although Flash is a niche skill it still remains today the foremost animation web tool and is set to keep that position for the foreseeable future.

As with most hands-on training books it comes with a CD-ROM attached with a series of video tutorials that are easy to follow.

8. Drupal 6 Themes by Ric Shreves

Drupal is a great CMS to use but it can be a real challenge to get to grips with the administration section let alone the actual dynamic code that it is written upon.

As has been noted elsewhere, there are countless quality free Joomla and WordPress themes to download and use across the net, but very few decent Drupal themes.

If you are serious about Drupal then sooner rather then later you will need to create your own theme rather than rely on somebody else’s creation.

Drupal 6 Themes should provide you with most of the information necessary to carry out this task although some basic knowledge of PHP would be of use when tackling this book.

9. Even Faster Web Sites by Steve Souders

This was published in 2009 and was intended as an extension to 2007′s High Performance Web Sites. Again, Souders is the author but chapters are also written by Ben Galbraith of Mozilla, Stoyan Stefonov of Yahoo and Google software engineer Tony Gentilcore.

The most important chapter for everyday web designers is that about how to effectively optimise images which doesn’t just look at the theory but also recommends some valuable tools.

The section on CSS examines how to write efficient code while there are multiple chapters on the correct use of JavaScript in a website.

10. PHP 5 Advanced by Larry Ullman

PHP is an expansive language and one that takes years to thoroughly learn. Once you’ve got past the initial headaches and confusion and you are starting to use it to create actual working forms and applications then Larry Ullman’s guide for advanced users will be useful.

Building on the knowledge he presented in PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites, Ullman looks at more complex database and security concepts and techniques as well as introducing the reader to Object Orientated Programming (OOP).

OOP is not for the faint hearted but if you want to use PHP to its maximum potential you’ll need to tackle this approach rather than just relying on procedural programming.

What books have helped you become a better web designer or developer?

Create amazing web designs using 70-646 tutorials and 650-177 designing ebook. Our 642-446 training provides best web design solutions.