PHP, AJAX, CSS Web Designing Books

[kev woodman]

What are your recommended top 5 books for a techy bookshelf? The ones that are inspiring or the ones that you always refer to.

For what it's worth my top 5 (in no particular order) at the moment are:

1. Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software by Erich Gamma.

2. Professional PHP5 by Edward Lecky-Thompson.

3. CSS Mastery by Andy Budd

4. Build Your Own Ajax Web Applications by Matthew Eernisse

5. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code by P. Goodliffe

And for relaxation I'm re-reading my tattered copies of H P Lovecraft's stories - with all the lights on obviously

[jon123]

I don't have any web tech books!
I don't know why just never owned one. I could sure do with some though.
I used to borrow a wide range of 'web' books from the local library and read then through more than once but not recently.

I will need to purchase some I guess.

As far as fiction, I am reading a book called "Replay" by "Ken Grimwood" for probably the 10th time. An excellent book but never made it to hollywood, never understood why!

[Administrator]

My subject is completely different from yours but books make huge difference for people from any field. I've read some books for positive thinking and inspiration but the most important teaching for me has come through experience. I love to understand people and how their brains work. Books give direction and experience brings perfection.

Its not easy to explain what I did and how I did to improve my knowledge in my field but I consider myself expert in Sales & Marketing as well as System Administration. No one can convert Sales like I can do and servers under my control are unbreakable.

I am not trying to over show my confidence but one needs to trust himself when it comes to System Administration, Sales & Marketing.

[kev woodman]

Sounds like hubris Admin. Self-confidence is nice but over-confidence is indistinguishable from arrogance. I've got a little real world example of 'book learning; vs 'real life experience' as well. In work our sys admin is a self-taught guy with no qualifications but over a decade of experience. Our latest recruit is a newly qualified youngster with a CS degree. Now the sys admin certainly knows a lot of stuff but his knowledge is nowhere near as broad as our young graduate. It's also noticeable that the graduate has a structured, professional approach that is well grounded in good theory, while our sys admin is noticeably amateur in comparison. If I wanted something done quickly I'd ask the older guy but if I wanted to feel confident that it would a) work first time and b) not bite me on the arse in six months, I'd ask the graduate. I could show you the same thing with developers and I've got a foot in both camps myself.

If you can stand reading e-books O'Reilly's Safari service is highly recommended. I have a subscription to the bookshelf which allows you to choose 10 books per month from thousands of titles. Not sure I could stand to read a whole book electronically but it's a brilliant reference resource.

[jon123]

I guess different trades and services would give you different results!
I for one have had many encounters with qualified electronics graduates who I wouldn't trust wiring a 3 pin plug!. They can talk a good repair but when it comes down to the repair they can't seem to convey what they have learned to their hands.
I myself am C&G qualified but what i learned in college is nothing compared to what i have learned since then. You cannot beat experience imo no matter what qualifications you possess!
In my trade, repairs some of the time require a 'process of emilination'. You can only learn this through practical experience, I would assume most trades and services are similar.

I have read some electronic books online but as you say, they are really hard going, much better on paper.

[kev woodman]

I'm not knocking experience - I'd definitely rather a CS graduate with 10 years of experience than a CS grad with none, but I'd prefer both to someone who just 'picked it up as they went along'. Same with most trades I guess Jon - after all you have your C&G qualification which you've built on and I think that gives you a broader base than someone who is unqualified.

In programming, for example, there are lots of very good hobbyist programmers who can knock up some software but if I wanted to outsource work then I'd be looking for someone who understood more abstract design principles so I knew we wouldn't run into problems further down the line.

[jon123]

I totally agree with you Kev. Qualifications are very important and if they come with experience then that's all the better.

[Administrator]

Qualification is important only if you have experience. We cannot allow a CS to login in our servers if he never had any previous experience of managing linux and windows servers.

We have staff members with RHCE and MCSE certifications but we never allowed them to start troubleshooting on servers before they went through training procedure under other system admins. No matter what qualification you have but you cannot get the tag of System Administrator before you gain some good experience.

Your CS guy is a Geek who has done lots of R & D on Servers before your company hired him.

[kev woodman]

I'd hope that every one we employ is a geek

Our new recruit is actually a programmer not a sys admin but I'd disagree that a qualification only counts if coupled with experience. The fact that someone has a qualification tells me a lot about them. For what it's worth my own take on this is coloured by the fact that I don't have an IT related degree but a few years ago I realised that my experience didn't actually give me the kind of skills I really need. As a result I went back to uni and am now just about finished on a degree course. I can tell you that I've learned things that I could not have learned 'on the job'.

[Falesh]

Just to give you an idea of my starting point, my education was cut short at 16 years old (about 11 years ago) while doing a GNVQ in science. I did manage to get the maths GCSE done before I crashed but that's as far as I got.

This last year I have gained enough energy to study and these books have really done me proud:


=amazon.co.uk/Head-First-HTML-CSS-XHTML/dp/059610197X/ref=pd_ka_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

My first tech book and it was fun all the way through. It places a great emphasis on standards based (X)HTML and CSS and shows you why this is a good thing (for your own benefit not just "cos it's right"). Having the =amazon.co.uk/CSS-Pocket-Reference-OReilly/dp/0596007779/ref=pd_ka_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]CSS Pocket Reference is damn handy when writing CSS before you memories the commands.


=amazon.co.uk/ZEN-CSS-Design-Visual-Enlightenment/dp/0321303474/ref=sr_1_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]The ZEN of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

I tried other CSS books, like =amazon.co.uk/CSS-Mastery-Advanced-Standards-Solutions/dp/1590596145/ref=pd_ka_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]CSS Mastery but they didn't really do it for me. This book, along with the =csszengarden.com/]zen garden website, really gave me a glimpse into better design. In fact it is a book you can gain from even if you don't know any code.


=amazon.co.uk/Learning-PHP-MySQL-Michele-Davis/dp/0596101104/ref=sr_1_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]Learning PHP and MySQL

This is where it started to get seriously codey and a hell of a lot of fun too. I had tried to learn programming before but never had the energy. PHP was actually perfectly suited to me. You can pick it up and do little things to start with then build and build until you are doing proper programming.

One thing though, make sure you look up about register_globals, sql injection, email header injection and general PHP security. This may sound a bit scary at first but PHP can be a solid secure language as long as you get some pretty simple basics understood.


=amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Design-Patterns/dp/0596007124/ref=sr_1_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]Head First Design Patterns

This was a very good book for me as due to not having studied programming formally I was a little (ok, very) sketchy about object oriented programming. It may sound odd going right into Design Patterns before getting really skilled up in OOP, but the book was very good at teaching not just design patterns but good OOP principles too.


=amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Object-oriented-Analysis-Design/dp/0596008678/ref=sr_1_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]Head First Object-oriented Analysis and Design

The book I am now half way through. This is helping to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about analysis and design. It covers things like how to get good requirements, UML, code architecture, etc.

That's about it, I've got one more book on order, =amazon.co.uk/Principles-Beautiful-Web-Design/dp/0975841963/ref=pd_ka_1/202-9732272-1279806?ie=UTF8&s=books]The Principles of Beautiful Web Design which looks very interesting too.

[kev woodman]

A fine selection Falesh - I own a few of those as well. Nice to see someone else who appreciates design patterns. Personally I think you're better off learning them as you learn OOP - otherwise you can be left trying to break bad programming habits.