Useful and Free Downloadable Web Design Books

There are a multitude of books (digital format or print) that cover every possible aspect of web design, each one is unique and offers a personalized opportunity for the author to both educate, inspire, and guide the reader through their knowledge.


In this website we have included several books that, we deem, are recommended reading... and all of these books are completely FREE, in digital format (PDF or HTML). We hope you find these books useful.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (HTML)

Author(s): Richard Rutter.
About the Book: For too long typographic style and its accompanying attention to detail have been overlooked by website designers, particularly in body copy. In years gone by this could have been put down to the technology, but now the web has caught up. The advent of much improved browsers, text rendering and high resolution screens, combine to negate technology as an excuse.

In order to allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web, this website/book has been structured to step through Bringhurst’s working principles, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS. The future is considered with coverage of CSS3, and practicality is ever present with workarounds, alternatives and compromises for less able browsers.

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Ruby Best Practices (PDF)


Ruby Best Practices
Author(s): Gregory Brown.
About the Book: In 1993, when Ruby was born, Ruby had nothing. No user base except for Gregory and a few close friends. No tradition. No idioms except for a few inherited from Perl.

But the language forms the community. The community nourishes the culture. In the last decade, users increased—hundreds of thousands of programmers fell in love with Ruby. They put great effort into the language and its community. Projects were born. Idioms tailored for Ruby were invented and introduced. Ruby was influenced by Lisp and other functional programming languages. Ruby formed relationships between technologies and methodologies such as test-driven development and duck typing.

This book introduces a map of best practices of the language as of 2009.
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Eloquent JavaScript (HTML)


Eloquent JavaScript
Author(s): Marijn Haverbeke.
About the Book: Eloquent JavaScript is a digital book providing a comprehensive introduction (tutorial) to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them.

The book is aimed at the beginning programmer ― people with prior programming experience might also get something out of it, but they should not read chapters 2 to 5 too closely, because most of the concepts discussed there will probably be nothing new to them. Do make sure you read the end of the first chapter, which has some essential information about the book itself.
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Web Designers Success Guide (PDF)

Web Designers Success Guide

Author(s): 
About the Book: Web Designer's Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business. In this book, Kevin Airgid gives designers a step-by-step instructions on how to achieve the following: Transition from full-time to self-employment, Freelance on the side to make additional income, Find new clients and keep them coming back for more, Market your freelance business, Manage your projects professionally and how to Price your services appropriately.
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The Woork Handbook (PDF)


The Woork Handbook
Author(s): Antonio Lupetti.
About the Book: The Woork Handbook is a free eBook about CSS, HTML, Ajax, web programming, Mootools, Scriptaculous and other topics about web design.

This book is a miscellanea of articles written by Antonio Lupetti on his web design blogr. During the period form January to December 2008 “Woork” has been visited from over 4 millions visitors and has received a lot of requests to distribute a printable version of its contents.
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Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites – 3rd Edition


Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites - 3rd Edition
Author(s): Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton.
About the Book: Written by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton for web site designers in corporations, government, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, the book explains established design principles and covers all aspects of web design—from planning to production to maintenance. The guide also shows how these principles apply in web design projects whose primary concerns are information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation.
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Dive Into Accessibility (HTML & PDF)


Dive Into Accessibility
Author(s): Mark Pilgrim.
About the Book: This book is entitled "Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days to a more accessible web site", and it will answer two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

To answer the second question, the book presents 25 tips that you can immediately apply to your own web site to make it more accessible. Although these concepts apply to all web sites, the focus is on implementation using popular weblogging tools. If you use some other publishing tool or template system, you will need to determine how to implement the tips in your tool of choice.
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