Question for Web Guys

[JamesSavik]

In my new job I am something of a jack of all trades. I take care of PC and network administration, databases and servers. That's all good.

 

The Web site is new for me.

 

I'm looking at getting some books:

 

The Ultimate HTML Reference

 

The Ultimate CSS Reference

 

Of course, I've already got Web Design in a Nutshell (the Ferret book)

 

 

Any suggestions on good books to help me get up to speed??

[One Cheap Suit]

I like the headfirst series for people getting up to speed:

 

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

 

Don't know what your platform is, but I have been using Wordpress as a content management system for client sites and they love it - very easy to customize with CSS and themes, super simple to build a site and turn it over to somebody else to manage.

 

Head First Wordpress

 

Head First PHP & MySQL

 

Your focus on learning should be heavy on CSS.

 

What IDE are you going to use? You can get Microsoft's for free, and you've always got old reliable Adobe Dreamweaver. You should get a book on your IDE as well.

[colinian]

James,

 

Here are a few books that I recommend as good introductions for for web developers:

 

HTML5 and CSS3 by Brian P. Hogan, The Pragmatic Bookshelf

CSS the missing manual by David Sawyer McFarland, O'Reilly

Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MYSQL by Kevin Yank, SitePoint

 

Colin

[Rilbur]

For reference, I generally just use W3Schools as a starting point, then move out from there. They aren't always 100% accurate, but they're easy to understand and sort through. They're probably best as a reference, but you can use their tutorials to get up to speed fairly quickly as well. WebDesign in a nutshell sounds like a useful book (very useful!), too -- something I might want to add to my shelf someday. Remember, design != coding. I can code a website; design... I'm much weaker at.