Rey Bango

I just finished A Book Apart’s first book titled HTML5 for Web Designers. The book, written by well-known developer Jeremy Keith, and provides an overview of HTML5. I was pretty hyped up to receive this book and pre-ordered it based on my experience with Jeremy’s previous book.

My Thoughts

If you’re totally new to HTML5, this book will give you a good overview of the new spec. It’s not a highly technical book and is meant to provide the reader with an understanding of the evolution of the spec as well as some of the most important features of HTML5 including Canvas, video and updated form capabilities. The book is very short (only 85 pages) and extremely easy to read, which allowed me to finish it off in about 2-3 days of non-contiguous reading. I also liked Jeremy’s use of humor throughout the book.

With that said, this book is definitely not a deep-dive into HTML5 and if you’re expecting to pick it up and actually learn how to use the new features, I think you’ll be disappointed. While there are some technical nuggets (especially around Canvas), the book is really just an overview with very little technical meat to it. And I believe that’s the way that A Book Apart is trying to promote their books; quick, easy-to-read materials that get you good information fast.

What I would recommend is that if you’re looking to get a 10,000 foot view of HTML5, pick up this book. It’s definitely worthwhile from that perspective. If you’re looking to better understand the implementation of specific features, then this is not the right choice. And I offer this recommendation whether you’re a developer or designer. Better resources for a deeper, technical understanding of HTML5 include:

Dive Into HTML5
HTML5 Demos
HTML5 Doctor

All of these are listed in the Resources section of the book and having read them previously truly are excellent sites for deep-diving into HTML5.

Over the years, I’ve read or been recommended a number of books which are essential reading for professional web developers. I’ve compiled the list of books below to help the community find a comprehensive list of good books that can help them be better coders.

JavaScript

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers – My new favorite book. Almost 1,000 pages of VERY detailed JavaScript information. Written by Nicholas Zakas, Yahoo! Principal Front-end Engineer for Yahoo!’s home page and recommended by the YUI team as well. BUY THIS BOOK!

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide – Considered the Bible of JavaScript for its thorough coverage of JavaScript. You need to have this in your library, even as a reference.

DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model – This is a good book to get you familiar with the DOM.

AdvancED DOM Scripting: Dynamic Web Design Techniques

Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional – The book by Christian Heilmann that really got me past the initial hump of plain ‘ole JavaScript. His writing style is awesome.

Object-Oriented JavaScript: Create scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries – JUST BUY THIS BOOK! Stoyan did a great job of outlining OOJS principles and it’s been incredibly valuable.

JavaScript: The Good Parts – It’s certainly a good book and I would recommend reading it after one of the more intro books like JS for Web Developer by Nicholas Zakas.

Learning jQuery 1.3 – While covering jQuery v1.3, the techniques discussed are still useful and I still recommend the book highly.

Pro JavaScript Techniques – John Resig’s famous book on advanced JS techniques.

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja – Still not out but considering that John Resig is that author, it’s sure to be great.

ppk on JavaScript, 1/e – One of the first books I picked up and great overview of the language.

Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs, and Libraries

Ajax Security – Billy Hoffman is the man when it comes to Ajax security and this books shows why.

jQuery Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for jQuery Developers (Animal Guide) – Tips & techniques from the jQuery team rolled up in a cookbook style. You can’t go wrong.

jQuery in Action, Second Edition – This is now updated for jQuery v1.4.x as well as jQuery UI 1.8.x. Definitely a must-have for jQuery developers

jQuery Enlightenment – Cody Lindley did an amazing job in outlining the best jQuery techniques in this self-published book. Totally worth the price.

Test-Driven JavaScript Development

jQuery: Novice to Ninja

HTML & CSS

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook, Special Edition

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)

The Art & Science Of CSS – This is one of Sitepoint’s best CSS books. Loved it.

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition – Not being a designer, I thought this book was a tremendous help in understanding how to better design sites.

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML – This has been my goto book for some time. The Head First books are just so great at breaking down topics in easy to understand ways and this book is no exception.

Introducing HTML5 (Voices That Matter) – Going to get this soon mainly because it’s written by Remy Sharp and Bruce Lawson whom I respect tremendously, especially for their HTML5 & CSS3 savvy.

HTML5 For Web Designers – Just got this on 7/19/10. Need to read it by it’s by Jeremy Keith and he rocks.

CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition (Animal Guide) – Just picked this up on a recommendation.

CSS: The Missing Manual – I keep hearing rave reviews about this book all over the place.

Site Performance & Enhancement

High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers – Steve Souders is the performance guru and if you want your apps to perform better, get this book and the one right below this one.

Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers

High Performance JavaScript (Build Faster Web Application Interfaces) – Again, another great book by Nicholas Zakas which outlines very important performance techniques for JavaScript applications.

Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web that Works for Everyone – Great book on progressive enhancement by the superstars at the Filament Group.

This is certainly not all inclusive and I’m sure there are other books out there that have been great. If you feel very passionate about a specific title, let me know via the comments and I’ll check it out.

I picked up Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book “Crush It!“. I had the pleasure of seeing Gary give a presentation at FOWA Miami and the man can totally get you pumped up. So I really wanted to get this book to understand more about what drives him and if it’s something that can help me in my professional and personal life.

The book revolves around building your brand, something that I’ve been working hard on for some time. Yes, I have a brand and it’s called “Rey Bango”. This is why every account I create on social networking sites and even the domain name of my site is based on my name. In reading through the chapters, it was cool to be able to identify the things that I had already done and if anything, the book served to as reassurance that I was thinking along the same lines as someone very successful in brand building.

While I did like the book as a whole, the biggest value for me came after chapter 6 when he discusses about cultivating your community and ensuring authenticity in your approach. Much of what he discussed resonated with me because of the efforts I’ve made in helping to build the jQuery community as well as building my personal network of professionals. I especially liked his focus on maintaining authenticity & transparency with your community (i.e.: keep it real).

Prior to that, the information wasn’t very useful to me mainly because it focused on things I had already done to build my brand. If you’re just getting started on that though, I do feel that every chapter can be extremely helpful in understanding how to build awareness about you and your passion.

This is the first book I’ve read in a long time where I genuinely didn’t put it down from the moment I started reading it. It’s a short read (~150 pages) and I finished it in a day but it was well-worth the purchase. I’d say that anyone who is genuinely interested in raising their profile and building their brand should pick up this book. Don’t expect it to be a step-by-step tutorial with a lot of hand holding but do expect some good examples of what you can do and a decent explanation of the tools you can leverage to build your brand.

Update: If you look in the comments, Gary Vaynerchuk commented demonstrating that he does practice what he preaches in his book!