If you are starting your web development or design journey, you need to have solid knowledge of HTML and CSS.
In order to make your mark on a world that’s already full of impeccable design layouts and UI interfaces, you’ll need a good grasp of styling basics. You’ll have to go to the depths of the design pit and return to the top with well-polished skills.
Now, in order to help you hone your skills and become an expert, I have listed here some of the greatest books available on the market that I have read. These books deal with CSS and Web design knowledge from the ground up.
They will not only teach you about design specifications but will also help you develop the vision to devise your own state of the art designs. Let’s look at them now.
CSS in Depth
Web developers must understand at least the basics of HTML and CSS. If you want to become an expert web developer, you’ve gotta know them through and through.
Well, this book helps you learn the styling part of web development that is CSS. It offers in-depth and structured ways to use CSS to style your HTML elements.
As I began reading this book, I discovered that it’s packed with creative examples and best practices of using CSS that will definitely sharpen your technical skills and inspire your sense of design.
With state of the art examples and exercises, this book will definitely hon your CSS skills and take it to the next level. From the basics of design to advanced CSS design concepts, you will experience it all in your path to master the nooks and corners of CSS. The objective of this book is to make you a better web designer and make your web apps look spectacular.
Enduring CSS
The main objective of this book titled “Enduring CSS” is to make the web developers write the CSS style codes which are durable over a long period of time. It is a guide to writing style sheets for large scale, rapidly changing, long-lived web projects. It taught me how to individualize the styles so that those CSS modules become simpler to transport into different contexts and projects. It imparts knowledge on CSS tools such as PostCSS and linting tools to study and maintain the CSS code base across the large project.
This book also specifies how to handle states more accessibly with ARIA attributes as opposed to class changes. There is much more in-depth knowledge to explore in this book.
CSS Refactoring
This book or a chapter of the book is mainly based on refactoring and scaling of the CSS codes. It imparts knowledge on what actually refactoring means and its relation to software architecture. According to the book “Refactoring is the process of rewriting code in order to make it more simple and reusable without changing it’s behavior “. Now, we know that CSS styles can be made re-usable as well by making an external stylesheet.
This book aims to help us re-write the design elements and attributes that are modular and scalable at the same time without changing their overall functions. It introduced me to best practices, examples, concepts of refactoring the CSS code and also performs a unit test on them. Overall, the book provides ample knowledge on how CSS works and how refactoring it will make the code more efficient, and scalable in the long run.
Atomic Design
The Atomic Design book written by Brad Frost introduces techniques for designing our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies. This book also discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries along with methods to transform the team’s design and development workflow. As a design concern, this Atomic design concept provided in this book divides the design components into different levels such as atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages. They basically help to understand the singular most unit of designing called atom which when structured properly becomes a molecule.
Molecular designs with the correct pattern of combination become an organism. The organisms placed accurately with proper design patterns from templates that we apply to pages. Hence, learning designs from this book is basically like learning chemistry where design elements are the chemicals. It is indeed an interesting book to read.
CSS Secrets
The Atomic Design book written by Brad Frost introduces techniques for designing our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies. This book also discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries along with methods to transform the team’s design and development workflow. As a design concern, this Atomic design concept provided in this book divides the design components into different levels such as atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages. They basically help to understand the singular most unit of designing called atom which when structured properly becomes a molecule.
Molecular designs with the correct pattern of combination become an organism. The organisms placed accurately with proper design patterns from templates that we apply to pages. Hence, learning designs from this book is basically like learning chemistry where design elements are the chemicals. It is indeed an interesting book to read.
HTML & CSS (also jQuery one)
This book is a full-fledge learning ground from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript including jQuery as well. It is an all-in-one book that offers a detailed understanding, concepts, practical examples, and best practices of HTML5, CSS3 including jQuery. At the end of the day, you will be able to design your own webpages and get them online in an instant. The lessons are straightforward with a step-by-step guide building upon the design concept from the ground up.
The main highlights are the stepwise instructions on most common web development tasks, practical examples of the applications of design patterns, and exercises to help you test your knowledge building up to the course. Overall, a well-equipped book to make you an expert in the field of web design and development.
GET READY FOR CSS GRID LAYOUT
Well, the grid layouts were an important addition to design specifications. They made the positioning of the elements on the webpage easier. The webpage could be segmented into different grid areas where each grid areas have their own set of design elements. The grid areas could be positioned anywhere necessary to give an intuitive look to the overall UI. Now, if you want to dive deep into the pits of grid layout then this book by Rachel Andrew definitely does the job for you.
With learning content from this book, you can get up to speed with Level 2 of the grid layout and dig into working examples you can experiment with right away. You will be able to harness the power and potential of sub-grid, which makes lining nested grid items with the main grid simple and easy.
CSS: The Definitive Guide: Visual Presentation for the Web
This book is for web designers that follow sophisticated page styling and improved accessibility which saves tons of time and effort. The latest edition of the guide lets you into the latest design and CSS specifications. This book lets you into the broader aspect of design implementations where you will focus on user experience, speed development, avoid potential bugs, etc.
Experiencing the depth of knowledge in this book, you will be able to add depth of awesome design elements to your applications through layout, transitions and animations, borders, backgrounds, text properties, and many other tools and techniques. This awesome guide for upgrading your web design skill is a must-read.
CSS3 FOR WEB DESIGNERS
If you look to transition from normal CSS specifications to CSS3 then, this book will definitely help you become an expert on it. CSS3 opens up a world of possibilities in the design world with the introduction of advanced selectors to generated content to web fonts, gradients, shadows, rounded corners with elegant animations as well. In the latest edition of this book by Dan Cederholm, new techniques and properties for micro-layouts are introduced.
With a wide range of browser support of CSS3 styles, you can polish your skill and test it out in any design environment to create beautiful and well-crafted design layouts.
Conclusion
You may as well learn from the online tutorials, video tutorials, and all as they are the quick guide to the design solution you are looking for. But here, we are not only looking for design solutions. We are in search of skilled designers who can envision their own set of designs that mesmerizes the web community. We need those who can transform their imaginations into web layouts.
In order to have the expertise, one must travel to depths of CSS styling pits learning from the best practices, techniques, and challenging them with every possible criterion for design there is. Hence, these books available will help you do exactly that. Enlighten yourself with the best books on web designing to take your designing career to new heights.
Learning standard CSS styling mechanisms is essential for any web developer. If you are looking to embark on the journey to become an expert web developer, you can check out some of the standard and full-fledged web development tutorials. Get yourself familiar with web dev ethics and different JavaScript frameworks.
The post The Best Web Design Books for HTML, CSS, and UI Interfaces in 2021 appeared first on Kriss.
Top comments (0)