Good books?

New to the game, what books to read?

[Stegger]

Hi,
I just started using Macromedia Studio recently and just went through Sams "teach yourself Dreamweaver in 24 hours" to get a grip on some elemental things. Now I am ready to move on! Or at least I feel like I am :-)
I have ordered the "Flash MX 2004" book from Savvy and "Building Dynamic Web Sites with Macromedia Studio Mx 2004" from New Rider. But I am wondering if there is any books you would recommend me to buy or perhaps just really good or really bad books you know of.
I am just building a basic web site to begin with but hope to take it to higher ground soon.
Thanks in advance,
Stegger

[utica]

Hi Stegger, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

I 've been happy with the Visual Quickstart Guide series and the Bible series of books. The first gets me going quickly, and the second usually has the detailed information I'm looking for.

Of coarse, it seems most stuff is best answered and learned on the web.

[OrlandoTodd]

I 2nd the Quickstart html book by Elizabeth Castro. Easy to read, lots of illustrations and segmented nicely. After you learn it, it becomes a great easy reference book.

[koocw]

I'm not sure if you can get it in your country, but if you're building an organisational website (for your company), try "The Unusually Useful Web Book" by June Cohen.

It is very much biased towards commercial sites, and talks about site design more than technologies. If you want an insight into designing for a company, this is it.

[koocw]

Oh yes, I nearly forgot - a must-read -

Web by Design: The Complete Guide
by Molly E. Holzschlag

Very thick - a little over 900 pages :(, but extremely comprehensive and useful.

P.S. - Try to specify what kind of book you want to read: designing, building etc.

;)

[Shannon Moore]

I recommend "The Design of Sites" by Van Duyne, Landay and Hong. Published by Addisson Wesley.

[limbo]

But if you want to read up on all the things that make an excellent site I would just pull up your favourite chair and get stuck into the library of posts here ;)

[edited by: caine at 3:47 pm (utc) on April 13, 2004]
[edit reason] affiliate url drop - against TOS [/edit]

[datadame]

I agree about the Visual Quick Start books, especially the ones by Elizabeth Castro. I have them on HTML, XHMTL, CSS, Javascript, and PHP. This is not to say I've become proficient in all those areas, but the VQS books have been so reliable that they're what I start out with whenever I'm tackling a new area. I haven't been disappointed yet.