Around 5 years ago, I learned how to build websites by starting with simple HTML in notepad. I then purchased a book that taught me more about HTML. I thought wow if I can create this, think of all the possibilities. But my possibilities needed to be styled in a way that looked good.
So I went out and purchased a book on CSS that taught me how to make my web pages look half decent. I then went on to buy a book about PHP and MySQL. But I first got into web design using a simple book that I purchased down the local book store. Today I have wrapped up a selection of 15 top books for beginners looking to get into web design and learn how to create beautiful websites.
Let me know If you have any of these books and what you think of them. Also, if you have any book suggestions for beginners in web design, feel free to drop a comment and let us know.
Want more? Check out these UX books!
Web Design For Dummies, 2nd Edition
About The Book
How many times have you visited a Web site and thought that you could do a better job if only you had the knowledge and skills? What was once exclusively a task for professionals, Web designing has become more accessible to amateurs, thanks to loads of handy software. With Web Design For Dummies, you will be able to design your own Web site like a pro in no time.
Learning Web Design: A Beginners Guide
About The Book
If you are up for some more books then you might want to have a look at this one. Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning — defining how the Web and web pages work — and builds from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you’ll know how to get your pages up on the Web.
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
About The Book
Today, serious Web pages use HTML and XHTML to structure their content and CSS for style and presentation. You need a book that understands how to incorporate everything correctly. Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML explains web design. In this book, pictures and step-by-step instructions explain how to build great-looking, standards-compliant web sites.
Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual
About The Book
Get everything you need to plan and launch a web site, including detailed instructions and clear-headed advice on ready-to-use building blocks, powerful tools like CSS and JavaScript, and Google’s Blogger. The revised, completely updated new edition of Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual explains how to get your site up and running quickly and correctly.
HTML and CSS Easy Web Design with XHTML
About The Book
This book is the Second Edition of “HTML and CSS Easy Web Design”. In this edition, we’ve updated the book with the latest technology and we added XHTML. With this information, you will be better prepared to design your website and understand the concept of web designing. The ability to create a website opens a gateway of communication with friends, interest groups, commercial customers and associates.
HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions
About The Book
Even if you’re an absolute beginner in web design, this book will teach you how to build future-proof web pages the right way using easy-to-master tools which are, in most cases, free. Through 14 easy-to- follow chapters, we introduce you to the fundamentals of contemporary web design practice. Step by step we’ll assemble well-structured XHTML webpages, which we’ll then style using handcrafted CSS.
Build Your Own Website the Right Way
About The Book
“Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition” teaches web development from scratch, without assuming any previous knowledge of HTML, CSS or web development techniques. This book introduces you to HTML and CSS as you follow along with the author, step-by-step, to build a fully functional web site from the ground up.
Flexible Web Design
About The Book
Liquid or fluid layouts change width based on the user’s unique device viewing size. These types of layouts have always been possible with tables but offer new design challenges as well as opportunities when built with CSS. This book, for experienced Web designers with some CSS experience, outlines how to do this successfully.
Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS
About The Book
This beginning guide reviews HTML and also introduces you to using XHTML for the structure of a web page and cascading style sheets (CSS) for controlling how a document should appear on a web page. You’ll learn how to take advantage of the latest features of browsers while making sure that your pages still work in older, but popular, browsers.
HTML for Beginners
About The Book
This book has been specifically written in the interest of students, who are beginning to learn HTML. Hence, the basic HTML commands are made easy in this book for them to learn this subject within a short period. The language used is simple so that the students can grasp easily. Though there are many books on HTML available in the market, the salient feature of this book is the simplicity which immediately appeals to the beginners.
Creating Web Pages with HTML Simplified
About The Book
Are you new to computers? Does new technology make you nervous? Relax! You’re holding in your hands the easiest guide ever to creating Web pages with HTML–a book that skips the long-winded explanations and shows you how things work. All you have to do is open the book, follow Chip, your friendly guide–and discover just how easy it is to get up to speed.
Creating Web Sites Bible
About The Book
If you want to build your own Web site in a 2.0 world, you’ve come to right place. From facing HTML without fear to adding new ?air with multimedia, interactivity, and blogging, this comprehensive guide provides you with everything you need. Loaded with nearly a thousand pages of invaluable techniques and step-by-step instructions, this is your one-stop resource for designing a site, taking it live, keeping it fresh, and moving into the world of e-commerce.
Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Creating Web Pages
About The Book
This hands-on tutorial teaches readers the fundamentals of creating Web pages, along with more advanced ideas like message areas, chat, and e-commerce options to make the page look like it was created by a professional. The book begins by explaining the need for HTML and the basics of good Web page design. It then covers using HTML tags and tools, formatting text, adding images, and building links.
Professional Web Site Design from Start to Finish
About The Book
If I gave you a box of carpentry tools, could you build me a house? While having the right tools to do a project is a great first step, you still need to learn the overall process of how and when to use those tools to achieve your goals, knowing that few other web design books present. This book starts with the assumption that you have the right tools — an Internet connection and a web authoring program or an HTML reference book — to begin with.
HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition
About The Book
Need to learn HTML fast? This best-selling reference’s visual format and step-by-step, task-based instructions will have you up and running with HTML in no time. In this completely updated edition of our best-selling guide to HTML, Web expert and best-selling author Elizabeth Castro uses crystal-clear instructions and friendly prose to introduce you to all of today’s HTML and XHTML essentials.
Great list. ‘learning web design’ is a very good book.
i have read some of them. “Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual” is my favorite.
your information is appreciable thanx alot
I have several of the books you mentioned above. However, I would be interested in knowing what were the two books you purchased to learn php and mysql?
What about all the hours I spent with you teaching you Photoshop, CSS, PHP and creating your first blog?
Good on you though – you’re doing well!
Yeh louis, nice one 🙂
Is it me, or does anyone else find these free online coding tutorials hard to follow?… u know the ones that teach how to code up a psd design into a working html & css file,
For one thing, they seem very rushed often provide very vaugue descriptions when explaining each step which often leaves me very frustrated when trying to fill in the gaps in my mind, going back and forth over the tutorial and finding, even though I have followed the tutorial step by step, what I produce almost never works which often leaves me very frustrated.
The trouble is, these designers that write these tutorials seem to think they can simply take off there designers hat and replace it with a teaching cap, well I’m afraid to say it’s not quite as a simple as that, and teaching is a skilled profession that has to be learn like any other profession.
So my advice to any other designers that need to learn how to code websites is this, go buy and invest in some of the recommended books above and learn the correct way from the start in a well explained manner. Stay well clear from free online tutorials!!
I learned some of my best first licks with those jackrabbit books… Now I build websites all day long…. If you didn’t know for sure, that is still an endorsement.
-tyler dockery
WHY are there only coding books? that not web _design_. Don´t understand why some people think it¨s all about coding and stuff. That´s just not right!
Every web page has to start with one line of code, right?
quote=”Does anyone recommend a really great book that maybe shows what has been dubbed as WEB 2.0 graphics or so?”
Web 2.0 its more about development of online software to brought the web more user friendly. You may do graphics for the old web (1.0? ), or for the web 2.0 or for the web.3.0… you may want to ask something about web 2.0!? well, i understood what you ask.. i´m being pain in the ass.. ROFL – but designing for wordpress icons, youtube avatars or blogs, etc etc it as not big science. am i right? Or maybe i needed also a good book about Web 2.0 Graphics 😀
Thanks! My son is competing in web page development in his school. He might be able to use some of this. Bookmarking!
🙂
A really good list of books I thought. FYI there is a typo in the first paragraph.
Great list of reading! I would like to know a really good, not OK, book on web graphic design. Whether it be about trends and techniques, but something that is not filled with graphics from 1996.
Does anyone recommend a really great book that maybe shows what has been dubbed as WEB 2.0 graphics or so?