Enjoying Safari

2006.07.15

One of the many great things about Google Summer of Code is that we get a complimentary Safari account from O’Reilly. It’s a “Basic Small” account for 2 months, with 10 slots, meaning we could keep about 10 books in our personal bookshelf to be read online at a given time. I logged in today, and got lost among the 3000+ titles. It’s no easy job selecting the best from the high quality tech books O’Reilly is known for. This is a brief look at the five I’ve selected so far.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book

The second edition of Robin William’s classic book is an excellent read for any designer as well as non-designer. I first got to know about her from Mike’s feature on Vitamin, How C.R.A.P. is your site design. The CRAP theme is the foundation of this little book, where she discusses them at length on how it applies to graphic design. Part 1 of the book is on Design Principles and Part 2 on Designing with Type, with a useful resource section at the end.

In this DT&G interview Robin explains how she not only writes her books but also designs them, and throughout the book you could see how she’s practicing what she preaches. Having raced through it (it’s addictively well-written), I can assure you this is a must read for anyone who hasn’t had a formal design education, like me.

Bulletproof Web Design

Dan Cederholm, A-lister, kick-ass-designer and author. There’s a wealth of practical advice here, even for the standards-savvy web designer. Scalability, flexibility and accessibility with web standards is the focus of the book, and each chapter tackles a problem discussing the issues with common implementations, and how they could be improved and made “bulletproof”.

I’ve already stolen a few ideas after flipping through, not only on web design, but on page layout as well. As noted by many readers, this is one gorgeous book.

Building Accessible Websites

Written by the one and only Joe Clark, one could argue this is pretty much the book on web accessibility. Afterall, not many can say “to hell with WCAG 2” with conviction, and then go on to start a WCAG Samurai. With 400+ pages of solid advice on a subject that still hasn’t got the attention it deserves, this book is a valuable resource for those discerning designers who know they can do better.

I’m sure there will be plenty of changes in the way I design sites after reading Joe Clark.

Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works

As with any profession, in web design also, success depends heavily on the process. Web Redesign is the authoritative guide on web design process and project management from the talented duo, Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on this book for so long. It’s full of pure practical goodness, especially for small design firms such as ours.

Hackers & Painters

Paul Graham is a visionary and hacker, and a favourite writer of many of us. His essays are inspirational. This book is a collection of the articles he has published online.

Here are three of my favourite Paul Graham articles:

Happy reading!

Permanent Link | Filed under: Design, Standards, Web, Thoughts

5 Comments

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  1. Joe Clark

    July 17th, 2006 at 10:48 am

    Whoops: It’s Joe Clark. I am not, in fact, Mod, hence I don’t have an E on my name.

  2. Prabhath

    July 17th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    @Joe, sorry about that - fixed :-)

    (Holy shit, Joe Clark commented on my site!)

  3. Lakshan

    July 18th, 2006 at 4:50 pm

    Your so lucky to get hold of such great books. :)

  4. Asela

    July 20th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

    Badly need to get my hands on Hackers & Painters..
    btw, how are things going on with your mentor? ;)

  5. Prabhath

    July 20th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

    Hackers & Painters is more or less a compilation of Paul Graham’s online essays, so if you’ve read them on his site, you won’t need to read the book.

    Unfortunately my mentor has fallen ill :( Hope she gets well soon.