Convert!


Benjamin Hunt - 2011
    But when his team more than doubled the conversion rates for a wide range of sites, they identified simple yet powerful solutions involving design, copy, appropriate analysis, classic optimization techniques, and targeted testing. You'll find the fixes easy to implement, and they're all right here.Understand the essentials - your market, your proposition, and your delivery.Create a site that is seen by the right people, provides a compelling experience, and generates the desired action.Learn how to use testing to improve your site's conversion rate.Discover the holistic nature of web site optimization and why multiplicity matters.Examine dozens of simple techniques for building traffic, engaging your audience, and crafting effective calls to action. Combine creativity with analysis for the best possible results. Ben Hunt is Principal Consultant for Scratchmedia Ltd. He operates webdesignfromscratch.com, which provides tutorials and advice to over 120,000 web developers each month. Ben has been designing, coding, and producing web sites for clients worldwide for more than 15 years, and is considered a leader in the web usability industry.Forewords by Ken McCarthy, founder of the System Seminar, and Drayton Bird, Drayton Bird Associates.

PHP Pocket Reference


Rasmus Lerdorf - 2000
    The quick reference section organizes all the core functions of PHP alphabetically so you can find what you need easily; the slim size means you can keep it handy beside your keyboard for those times when you want to look up a function quickly without closing what you're doing.This valuable little book provides an authoritative overview of PHP packed into a pocket-sized guide that's easy to take anywhere. It is also the ideal companion for O'Reilly's comprehensive book on PHP, Programming PHP.The PHP Pocket Reference an indispensable (and inexpensive) tool for any serious PHP coder.

Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists


Margaret Hartwell - 2012
    Combined with a companion deck of sixty original archetype cards, this kit will give you a practical tool to:Reveal your brand's motivations, how it moves in the world, what its trigger points are and why it attracts certain customers.Forge relationships with the myriad stakeholders that affect your business.Empower your team to access their creativity and innovate with integrity.Readers will use this tool over and over again to inform and enliven brand strategy, and to create resonant and authentic communications. For more information visit www.archetypesinbranding.com.

Web Style Guide: Foundations of User Experience Design


Patrick J. Lynch - 1999
    This new revised edition confirms Web Style Guide as the go-to authority in a rapidly changing market. As web designers move from building sites from scratch to using content management and aggregation tools, the book’s focus shifts away from code samples and toward best practices, especially those involving mobile experience, social media, and accessibility. An ideal reference 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.

The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places


David Gibson - 2009
    Whether we find ourselves in a museum, hospital, airport, mall, or street in an unfamiliar city, we depend on systems of visual, audible, and tactile cues not only to lead the way, but also to keep us safe. They are the fundamental questions of wayfindinga process that encompasses both the experience of choosing a path within a built environment and the set of design elements that aid in such a decision. A decade ago, the professional practice of wayfinding design simply involved devising sign systems. Today, the field is much broader and continues to expand to address technological developmentskinetic media, GPS systems, web connectivity, smart materialsas well as cultural changes in areas such as branding and environmental awareness. Similarly, a cross-disciplinary familiarity with graphic, architectural, landscape, interior, industrial, and information design has become an essential requirement of twenty-first-century wayfinding design.The Wayfinding Handbook is an exciting new volume in our acclaimed Design Briefs series. Professional wayfinding designer David Gibson draws on more than thirty years of experience collaborating with architects, planners, developers, managers, and civic leaders to offer an insider's view of this rapidly evolving discipline. Using real-life examples, Gibson illustrates the way type, color, mapmaking, dimensional forms, material selection, and new media are used to create effective wayfinding systems.The Wayfinding Handbook is a complete guide to the discipline, from planning and design to practical considerations, such as setting up teams and managing projects. "Other Voices" sidebars, presentedthroughout the book, reveal the opinions of experts who plan, manage, and shape wayfinding projects. A comprehensive bibliography and gallery of resources round out what is likely to become the go-to resource for students, professionals, or anyone charged with designing people-friendly, universally accessible environments.

Key Person of Influence (Revised Edition): The Five-Step Method to become one of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry


Daniel Priestley - 2010
    Every industry revolves around Key People of Influence Their names come up in conversation. They attract opportunity. They earn more money. Many people think it takes decades of hard work, academic qualifications and a generous measure of good luck to become a Key Person of Influence. This book shows that there is a strategy for fast-tracking your way to the inner circle of the industry you love. Your ability to succeed depends on your ability to influence. Start now by reading this book.

Head First Ajax: A Brain-Friendly Guide


Rebecca M. Riordan - 2008
    Head First Ajax gives you an up-to-date perspective that lets you see exactly what you can do--and has been done--with Ajax. With it, you get a highly practical, in-depth, and mature view of what is now a mature development approach. Using the unique and highly effective visual format that has turned Head First titles into runaway bestsellers, this book offers a big picture overview to introduce Ajax, and then explores the use of individual Ajax components--including the JavaScript event model, DOM, XML, JSON, and more--as it progresses. You'll find plenty of sample applications that illustrate the concepts, along with exercises, quizzes, and other interactive features to help you retain what you've learned.Head First Ajax covers:The JavaScript event modelMaking Ajax requests with XMLHTTPREQUEST objectsThe asynchronous application modelThe Document Object Model (DOM)Manipulating the DOM in JavaScriptControlling the browser with the Browser Object ModelXHTML FormsPOST RequestsXML Syntax and the XML DOM treeXML Requests & ResponsesJSON -- an alternative to XMLAjax architecture & patternsThe Prototype LibraryThe book also discusses the server-side implications of building Ajax applications, and uses a black box approach to server-side components.Head First Ajax is the ideal guide for experienced web developers comfortable with scripting--particularly those who have completed the exercises in Head First JavaScript--and for experienced programmers in Java, PHP, and C# who want to learn client-side programming.

The Elements of Typographic Style


Robert Bringhurst - 1992
    Combining practical, theoretical, and historical, this book is a must for graphic artists, editors, or anyone working with the printed page using digital or traditional methods.Having established itself as a standard in its field The Elements of Typographic Style is house manual at most American university presses, a standard university text, and a reference work in studios of designers around the world. It has been translated into italian and greek, and dutch.

Product Design for the Web: Principles of Designing and Releasing Web Products


Randy J. Hunt - 2013
    To create a successful web product that's as large as Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest-or even as small as a tiny app-you need to know more than just HTML and CSS. You need to understand how to create meaningful online experiences so that users want to come back again and again.In other words, you have to stop thinking like a web designer or a visual designer or a UX designer or an interaction designer and start thinking like a product designer.In this breakthrough introduction to modern product design, Etsy Creative Director Randy Hunt explains the skills, processes, types of tools, and recommended workflows for creating world-class web products. After reading this book, you'll have a complete understanding of what product design really is and you'll be equipped with the best practices necessary for building your own successful online products.

Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters


Bill Tancer - 2008
    As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life.Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

Everything I Know


Paul Jarvis - 2013
    It's a swift kick in the creative ass without fairies, unicorns or new-age cliches. Paul Jarvis is the strategic and design talent behind some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and online businesses - including Danielle LaPorte, Marie Forleo, Yahoo, The High Line and Mercedes-Benz - and he's learned a thing or two about forging your own path in life and work. Instead of offering one-size-fits-all advice, Paul provides an infinitely flexible template for adventure. There is a better, more satisfying path out there, if you're willing to take risks and explore new territory. This book provides practical ideas and questions to help you conquer fear, overcome inertia, embrace vulnerability, validate your plans and launch even the most outlandish projects on a basement budget. How and where you go next is entirely up to you. "Paul Jarvis is a lively, talented & incredibly insightful writer." -Maccabee Montandon, Fast Company "Paul Jarvis is the friend that every creative needs: friendly, whip-smart, & willing to give you a kick in the ass every now & then." -Sean Blanda, Adobe/99u

These Days


Jack Cheng - 2013
    Not the ones you see in sci-fi movies or primetime crime dramas, though he's worked on a couple of those in the past. The interfaces he designs tend to be static: they are the screens for prop computers in furniture showrooms. Young creative professional, child of the internet, refugee of the suburban Midwest, Connor goes about his life and work in New York City with a stream of status updates flowing constantly in the background. He meets K, a gamine twenty-four-year-old who doesn't own a cellphone. As he gets to know her, Connor realizes he's strayed from his younger ambitions of designing real interfaces, working on real technology. He soon falls in with a group of entrepreneurs out to invent the future, but it’s the same future K is so adamantly against. THESE DAYS is a foray into the world of startups and an examination of the human side of technology, of both the makers and the end users, who are often one and the same. It's about finding happiness and fulfillment in the digital age; a meditation on time, memory, and things gained and lost in an accelerating world.

JavaScript Enlightenment


Cody Lindley - 2012
    In this concise book, JavaScript expert Cody Lindley (jQuery Cookbook) provides an accurate view of the language by examining its objects and supporting nuances.Libraries and frameworks help you build web applications quickly and efficiently, but when things go wrong or performance becomes an issue, knowing how and why they work is critical. If you're ready to go under the hood and get your hands dirty with JavaScript internals, this is your book. Get a short and digestible summary of ECMA-262, Edition 3, backed by real code you can run instantly Examine the creation of JavaScript objects Learn complex values, primitive values, scope, and inheritance Understand the importance of the head object Work with string, number, and Boolean objects and values Discover how to use the null value and the built-in math object Get into the details--beyond Mozilla's reference guide for JavaScript 1.5

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming


Marijn Haverbeke - 2010
    I loved the tutorial-style game-like program development. This book rekindled my earliest joys of programming. Plus, JavaScript!" —Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScriptJavaScript is the language of the Web, and it's at the heart of every modern website from the lowliest personal blog to the mighty Google Apps. Though it's simple for beginners to pick up and play with, JavaScript is not a toy—it's a flexible and complex language, capable of much more than the showy tricks most programmers use it for.Eloquent JavaScript goes beyond the cut-and-paste scripts of the recipe books and teaches you to write code that's elegant and effective. You'll start with the basics of programming, and learn to use variables, control structures, functions, and data structures. Then you'll dive into the real JavaScript artistry: higher-order functions, closures, and object-oriented programming.Along the way you'll learn to:Master basic programming techniques and best practices Harness the power of functional and object-oriented programming Use regular expressions to quickly parse and manipulate strings Gracefully deal with errors and browser incompatibilities Handle browser events and alter the DOM structure Most importantly, Eloquent JavaScript will teach you to express yourself in code with precision and beauty. After all, great programming is an art, not a science—so why settle for a killer app when you can create a masterpiece?

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog


Thord Daniel Hedengren - 2010
    You will learn the core concepts used to build just about anything in WordPress, resulting in fast deployments and greater design flexibility.Inside, WordPress expert Thord Daniel Hedengren takes you beyond the blog and shows you how WordPress can serve as a CMS, a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, and more.YOU WILL LEARN: THE ANATOMY OF A WP INSTALL AND HOW WORDPRESS ACTUALLY WORKS HOW TO BUILD BEAUTIFUL WORDPRESS THEMES - INCLUDING CHILD THEMES HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM LOGIN FORMS AND ADMIN THEMES HOW TO USE THE LOOP TO CONTROL CONTENT, AND EVEN USE ALTERNATIVES TO THE LOOP HOW TO INTEGRATE THEME OPTIONS HOW TO BUILD PLUGINS - INCLUDING WIDGET FUNCTIONALITY HOW TO BUILD YOUR WORDPRESS PROJECTS FOR SEO INTEGRATE WORDPRESS WITH THE SOCIAL WEB HOW TO CREATE AMAZING NAVIGATION HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL CONTROL ELEMENTS