Basic Website Design

Web Concept and Design by Crystal Waters (www.typo.com)
This is a good basic book on website planning, layout and design. Clearly written, never dull and contains some good examples.

Creating Killer Websites second edition by David Siegel (www.hayden.com)
Classic and sometimes controversial book on website design (check out the many good and bad reviews at amazon.com). Although absolutist at times, this book gives many good design principles from one of the Internet pioneers. Note that I personally disagree with his concept of using "tunnel pages" to access a website.

Web Page Design, Volume 6 by Jon M. Duff (Sams Net Publishing ISBN 1-57521-242-0) This unassuming book is an excellent introduction to website design and design principles in general. This book is clear, well written and easy to follow.

Web Pages that Suck by Vincient Flanders and Michael Willis (ISBN: 078212187X check out their excellent website at www.webpagesthatsuck.com)
Funny often irreverent introduction to website design. Teaches you what to do by showing you what not to do. Excellent introduction to the pitfalls of website design.

Design in General

The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (Peach Pit Press, ISBN 1-56609-159-4)
Highly Recommended. This book is not specifically about web design but about good design principles. Williams distills both basic and advanced design principles into clearly written, easy to read little book. Each point is followed by a clear example.

Roger C. Parker's One-Minute Designer (MIS Press, ISBN 1-55828-593-8)
Another excellent book on general page layout and design. Not as clear and simple as the William's book but goes into much more depth.

Designing Business by Clement Mok (Adobe Press ISBN 1-56830-282-7)
In depth and beautiful illustration book on information systems design. Easy reading with 5 clear case studies.

Training Videos: Program Specific

Learning Dreamweaver 2.0 by Lynda Weinman (www.lynda.com)
Lynda Weinman has a real gift for teaching. This video tape will teach you Macromedia Dreamweaver (a highly recommended professional website design program) step by step. No prior web design experience necessary.

Learning Fireworks 2.0 by Lynda Weinman and Donna Casey (www.lynda.com)
On this tape, Lynda, with help from Donna Casey, takes teaches you how to use this most powerful web graphic and image design program from Macromedia. No knowledge of graphic design or website design is assumed, yet by the end of this tape you will learn how graphic design techniques that will really make your website sizzle.

Intermediate and Advanced Study

Phil and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Phillip Greenspun (ISBN 1-55860-534-7 Morgan Kaufmann Publishing) You can read the entire book on line at: http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/
This book is the definitive guide to creating large scale database driven websites and on-line communities. This book is aimed at a wide audience, from novices to seasoned web designers, programmers and corporate executives. Phil Greenspun is highly entertaining and keeps the book lively and easy to read.

HTML Web Magic Second Edition by Raymond Pirouz (New Riders ISBN 1-56830-475-7)
A handy reference on spicing up your website with rollovers, images and more. Clearly written, good illustrations. Well organized, also makes an excellent reference book. Not for the beginner, assumes some knowledge of HTML.

Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl (O'Reilly 1-56592-257-3)
Regular Expressions is a shorthand used in many programming languages, search engines and operating systems for manipulating text strings. Learning regular expressions look daunting at first. This book will help take the mystery out of using regular expressions. Well written and practical, I highly recommend this book if you plan on doing any server side programming.

Perl 5 Interactive Course, Certified Edition by Jon Orwant (Sams Publishing ISBN 1-57169-113-8) Perl is a server side scripting and programming language. Perl is essentially "the glue" that holds the web together. Perl is used by many of the largest and most popular sites on the web and best of all Perl is free. As an example, many of the interactive features of this site, such as the domain name search, are written in Perl. This book is an excellent introduction to the Perl language. It is suitable for both beginner and intermediate programmer.

Professional PHP Programming by Jesus Castagnetto, Harish Rawat, Sascha Schumann, Chris Scollo, and Deepak Veliath (Wrox Press ISBN 1-861002-96-3). PHP is a server-side scripting language designed specifically for the web. It is quickly gaining popularity because PHP is fast, flexible and easy to learn. Over 1 million websites use PHP, including this one. The customer response form is written in PHP. Unfortunately, there are very few books written on PHP since it is relatively new. The good news is that this book is an excellent introduction and is quite complete.

Reference

HTML 4 Unleashed by Rick Darnell, et. al. (Sams.net Publishing ISBN 1-57521-380-X)
Excellent Desk Reference on HTML, Javascript, and Dynamic HTML comes with a complete HTML language reference CD. HTML tag compatibility reference tables in the Appendix.

E-Commerce Recommended Reading