20+ Free Web Design Ebooks And Guides

20+ Free Web Design Ebooks And Guides

March 4, 2008

Even though there are plenty of books available in stores on almost all aspects of web design, you don’t need to spend a dime when you can get all the basic information for free. The following list of free web design ebooks and guides will get you started building accessible, usable, and useful web sites in no time.

General web design ebooks

WEB STYLE GUIDE – It is a practical guide to help you design Web sites for the long run. This book offers basic design principles that you can use to make your content as easy to understand as possible.

Web Typography Style Guide – This guide covers the basics of good typography on the web, explaining theory behind font choices, and the details of providing accessible and good looking text.

Web Design at Wikiversity – Includes topics that help provide a pathway for you to learn the main skills of web design.

Web design from scratch – Your complete guide to web design.

Getting Real – Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value and inspiration in this book.

Laura Lemay’s Guide to Sizzling Web Sites – This book is a must for you if you are a Web designer and require a hands-on reference with practical and conceptual techniques to expand your knowledge and enhance your work.

Web Design Reference Guide – This guide provides a snapshot of everything Web design. The information in this guide includes reference, news, and access to the Web design community.

Eloquent JavaScript – Eloquent JavaScript is a digital book providing a comprehensive introduction (tutorial) to the JavaScript programming language.

Accessibility

Access by design – The Universal Usability site houses an unabridged, online version of Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers, by Sarah Horton.

Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design – This book tells you how to integrate accessibility throughout design.

Building Accessible Websites – Explains how to design, develop, and program Websites (Web sites) that are accessible to people with disabilities (blind/visually-impaired, deaf/hard-of-hearing, mobility-impaired, learning-disabled).

Dive Into Accessibility – 30 days to a more accessible web site.

Usability

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines – Current research-based guidelines on web design and usability issues.

Current Issues in Web Usability – Usability expert Jacob Nielson’s column on web usability.

Task-Centered User Interface Design – The central goal of this book is to teach the reader how to design user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and use them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably.

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design – Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design is an intermediate-level book about interface and interaction design, structured as a pattern language. It features real-live examples from desktop applications, web sites, web applications, mobile devices, and everything in between.

CSS and (X)HTML

Complete css guide – Complete CSS Guide is a reference to every aspect of cascading style sheets. If you need help learning CSS or if you’re looking for info about selectors, properties and all the other aspects of cascading style sheets, this is the place.

Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 CSS2 Specification – CSS2 reference.

CSS CHEAT SHEET – Also available as PDF download.

HTML Dog: The Best Practice Guide To XHTML and CSS – Welcome to HTML Dog, the web designer’s resource for everything HTML and CSS, the most common technologies used in making web pages.

USING HTML, Second Edition – A comprehensive book covering basic to advanced web design techniques using HTML.