The Zen of CSS design // Dave Shea & Molly E Holzschag

New Riders 2005 296pp
ISBN 0 321 30347 4
UK cover price £28.99 (paperback)

For my more techie clients... I’m amazed at the number of times I take over a site that mangles together styling and content, like phlegm and diced carrots in a pile of sick. Yes, the first draft can often be done quicker that way. But you lose the savings - and more - as soon as you have to update the page.

There is a better way. It’s CSS. This book - and the related site www.csszengarden.com - makes the case eloquently and beautifully.

Notes on book design // Derek Birdsall

Yale University Press 2004 236pp
ISBN 0 300 10347 6
UK list price £30.00 (hardback)

Every web consultant has had that conversation with a client... the one that tries to ease his or her head round the idea that the web is not a book. That other people will be seeing the page at screen sizes from big TV to small phone, in different browsers, with different panels and toolbars loaded, in a different typeface at a different font size. But it would be great if we all spent a little longer thinking about how a website could be more like a book.

Birdsall has designed some tasty books in his time, from Penguins to sumptuous art catalogues though I find I only own one of them (OK, it’s Monty Python & the Holy Grail). This book is oozing with ideas that can make web pages - not just books - both effective and pleasing.

It would be quite possible to design for the web without drinking this glorious book down to the dregs. But why would you?

Son of Web pages that suck // Vincent Flanders

Sybex 2002 295pp
ISBN 0 7821 4020 3
UK cover price £32.99 (paperback + CD)

Subtitled “Learn good design by looking at bad design”, this book is a hoot. And a revelation. Clients should read it - or its predecessor - and consultants should live in daily fear of having their work featured in the next edition. Or on Flanders’s site (www.webpagesthatsuck.com).

Outrageous cover price, but you could pick up a copy for peanuts in 2010.

The Social Life of Information // John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid

Harvard Business School Press 2002 330pp (2^nd ed.)
ISBN 1 57851 708 1
US cover price $16.95 (paperback)

There are times when a web consultant should say “I’d love to take your money, but a new system won’t fix your problem”. This book helps identify those times.

The recurring theme is that if you don’t understand the way people act and interact with information then you haven’t got a hope of making good systems.

To be honest the book is longer than its contents - read selectively.

Designing Web Usability // Jakob Nielsen

New Riders 1999 419pp
ISBN 1 56205 810 X
UK cover price £34.99 (paperback)

Subtitled “the practice of simplicity”, this is a must-read for anybody writing stuff for the web. It might look like common sense on the page, but you don’t need to spend long on the web to see how uncommon it is in practice. A few of Nielsen’s dearly-held views have been rejected by thoughtful practitioners in the 10 years since this came out, but surprisingly many haven’t. Claimed sales of 1/4 million copies...

Most of it’s on Nielsen’s site (www.useit.com/alertbox), but the book is more usable (and, yes, I do know what I just said!).

Outrageous price. But you’d do well to get a discount of more than £8 in 2010.

How buildings learn // Stewart Brand

Viking 1994 243pp
ISBN 0 670 83515 3
UK cover price £18.00 (hardback)

When you have invested in an expensive asset and your needs change, you have a conundrum. I include this book because that conundrum applies to computer applications as well as to buildings... and often quicker. The alternatives to demolition & rebuilding described in this book remind us that a building (or system) and its users shouldn’t be viewed as separate.

Besides, it’s a great read. The anecdote about New College, Oxford is almost worth the cover price!