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Tag: book summary

Review: WordPress Web Design for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson

WordPress Web Design for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is one of the best on WordPress I’ve read, because it covers the work I do with WordPress: administration, tweaking themes, and finding and using plugins. It shows how to create several types of sites with WordPress, and explains […]

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Review: Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm

Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm My rating: 4 of 5 stars In this visual book, Dan Cedarholm and Ethan Marcotte demonstrate 3 principles of “handcrafted CSS” through several specific examples. The examples feature border-radius, RGBA, modular floats, fluid grids, typography, and jQuery. The examples won’t age well, but the concepts certainly […]

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Review: Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson

Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson My rating: 3 of 5 stars An entertaining introduction to HTML5 with real-world examples. Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp have a creatively funny writing style, and I laughed at many of their code samples. The book covers several topics: structure, text, forms, video and audio, canvas, data storage, offline, drag […]

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Review: CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric A. Meyer

CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric A. Meyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Definitive Guide” is a fairly accurate title for this 3rd edition of Eric Meyer's CSS textbook; it’s a deep dive of sometimes eye-glazing detail. It’s quite technical in its explanations of the math and calculations that CSS performs. There are CSS […]

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Review: The Web Design Business Kit by Brendon Sinclair (SitePoint)

The Web Design Business Kit 2.0 by Brendon Sinclair My rating: 5 of 5 stars This SitePoint kit is packed with actionable advice and recommendations for web design and development businesses. The author draws on 10 years of firsthand experience plus tips from other successful web professionals. It’s a well-organized, easy read with summaries and […]

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Review: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird My rating: 5 of 5 stars An excellent introduction to the artistic side of web design. Beaird teaches that a site’s design should reinforce the identity of the organization, and expertly shows how to use layout and composition, color, texture, typography, and imagery. He explains the […]

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Review: Creating a Website: the Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

Creating a Website: the Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a decent introduction to many topics related to web design; too many topics, in my opinion. I expected the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but a large part of the book teaches how to use Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, […]

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Review: CSS Web Site Design by Eric A. Meyer

CSS Web Site Design Hands on Training by Eric A. Meyer My rating: 3 of 5 stars An elementary, step-by-step illustrated guide by CSS master Eric Meyer. The book's a good introduction to CSS, but it only covers the basics; it uses a simple, 2-column site for demonstrations, and doesn't provide any advanced CSS techniques. […]

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Review: Starting Your Career as a Freelance Web Designer by Neil Tortorella

Starting Your Career as a Freelance Web Designer by Neil TortorellaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m starting to freelance as a part-time web designer, so this book was exactly what I needed. It addresses all areas of freelance web design, including the design process, rates and billing, contracts, insurance, client relations, and marketing. Tortorella […]

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Review: HTML, XHTML & CSS For Dummies by Ed Tittel

HTML, XHTML & CSS For Dummies by Ed Tittel My rating: 2 of 5 stars I can’t recommend this book; there are several that do are better for introductory HTML and CSS. It’s quite broad, covering many Web technologies, but it’s not very deep. It focuses on HTML and CSS, but also touches on scripting […]

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Review: Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours by Julie C. Meloni

Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours by Julie C. Meloni My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a decent introduction to HTML and CSS. Its main advantages over other books of this type are the full color examples and syntax-highlighted code snippets. The explanations and examples are simple and easily understood. […]

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Review: WordPress All-in-One For Dummies

WordPress All-in-One For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Cory Miller, Kevin Palmer, Andrea Rennick, Michael Torbert My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the broadest, most comprehensive WordPress book I’ve read so far. It covers more than WordPress for Dummies, because it deals with everything from administration to design to development. I skimmed the first […]

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