There is a LOT of buzz right now about the strength of web technologies for all kinds of development.

CSS has always been a bit of a black art to me but as I’ve embraced developing with jQuery I’ve needed to develop some level of expertise.

With HTML 5 and CSS 3 we get an incremental expansion of features.

I got “The Book of CSS3” by Peter Gasston from the folks at No Starch Press.

It covers the new features of CSS3 and all the fancy stuff but has solid practical guidance for developers on how to do things like layout and columns (which I have struggled with.)

I also found the sections on using the visual features of things like transforms, animations, gradients, and fonts very useful.

Recommended !

[ Click the books above to see them on Amazon ]

I’ve said for many years that were I ever to teach a university course on web development Murach’s books would be the textbooks that I would use.

Since many folks have emailed me to say that they used these books to learn ASP.NET I thought I’d let folks know that Murach has updated them to the 4 versions of .NET

The folks at Murach were nice enough to send me the latest versions and they are everything that I’ve come to expect from a Murach book.

The ASP.NET book is THE quintessential resource for learning ASP.NET Web Forms Development (yes, WebForms is still the #1 ASP.NET Development model by a significant margin).

It covers details of every aspect of ASP.NET Web Forms development. Two particularly interesting coverage areas are the use of WCF services and details  working with web applications on Windows 7.

The ADO.NET book not only provides tutorial on all the aspects of ADO.NET data access but walks you through building an application. Though there is the expected focus on LINQ, Entity Framework, etc. there is also coverage on other data like XML.

As always, You can’t go wrong.

For years I’ve said “JavaScript is inevitable”.  More and more all web developers are needing to add richness to their Web UIs and their UI Interactions.

The thing about Scripting Languages is that folks tend to learn by trial and error. There is nothing wrong with this, it’s how I learned JavaScript.

But, writing Client Side & Server Side code together can be tricky. I very frequently get email from customers experiencing a debugging problem whose answer is fund in confused or incorrectly mixed Client / Server coding.

So, writing good, clean MODERN JavaScript is not only important to but a service to anyone who will need to crack open your code in the future to make enhancements (including the original author).

So I got this book. “Eloquent JavaScript – A Modern Introduction to Programming”.

This is a great book except for the subtitle. Since it’s called an introduction, folks that have some JavaScript experience might pass this book up and that would be a shame.

I found it not only a tutorial but a style guide.

Coverage includes, Data Structures, Object Oriented JavaScript Programming, Functional Programming, Modularity, the DOM, HTTP Requests, as well as all the basics of JavaScript.

I encourage you to check it out [ HERE ]

There are few ASP.NET Performance books out there and even fewer good ones.

This one I like. Matt Perdick has taken an interesting approach by not just presenting technology tips and tricks that can be used to positively effect performance but rather presents the technologies in the context of a methodology one can use to identify and resolve performance problems in their own web applications.

Matt covers the tools you can use with the bottleneck pinpointing process to find and fix issues with :

• Time to First Byte
• Memory Usage
• CPU Consumption
• Caching
• Browser
• Proxy
• Output
• IIS Output
• Data
• Thread usage and Asynchronous Architectures
• Reducing Long Wait Times
• Database Access
• Time to Last Byte
• Compression
• Forms Optimization
• JavaScript and CSS
• Images
• Load Testing
• It’s easy to read with ample code samples and screenshots and contains many, many of the kind of tips you would expect concerning things like ASP.NET View State, Element Ids, working with User Agent specifics, etc.

A good addition to your ASP.NET Expertise.

[ Get it HERE ]

Yep! Another great Murach’s book.

This book is the quintessential learning resource for PHP development.

Like all of Murach’s books, it teaches far more then the nuts and bolts of the technology but also what the right ways to use them are.

The book is up to date with PHP 5.3 and takes you through getting the PHP Stack set up (Windows or Mac)

It quickly covers foundational requirements like HTML, CSS, and HTTP and then jumps into how to write and debug PHP code.

It not only covers the breadth of detail about web programming specifics with PHP, like cookies, images, uploads, etc. but also provides great higher level guidance.

There are sections on often overlooked topics for new PHP developers like Object Oriented Programming and using the MVC pattern in PHP.

As I often say about Murach’s books – if I were teaching a course on PHP development, this is the book I would teach the course from. Not only a great learning / training resource, but once you’ve read it, it becomes a great desk reference.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you already know that I love the Murach Books.

Murach’s has updated their great C# book for v4 / 2010.

If I were going to teach a course on C#, this is the book I would use.

From the official description….

#1: A FAST start, coupled with Visual Studio productivity
This book starts you off using all the best features of Visual Studio so you can begin productive work almost immediately. In fact, it has you create a simple business application in chapters 2 and 3 so you can see right away how the core features of C# and of Visual Studio work. Download these chapters for free, and see for yourself.

#2: Object-oriented programming made clear
When it comes to object-oriented programming, too many C# books resort to whimsical but useless metaphors, like illustrating objects by creating animal classes such as mammals, cats, and dogs. Then they leave it up to you to figure out how to transfer these concepts to business applications.
In contrast, we present business objects such as customers, invoices, and products so you can see how OOP is used to create multi-tiered applications in the real world.

#3: Confidence in handling business requirements
Learning to use C# classes and OOP techniques isn’t enough. You also have to know how to code for the tasks that are required in most business applications. So this book builds on your skills in incremental steps to teach you how to validate data, handle numeric, date, and string data, work with loops, arrays, and collections, code methods and event handlers, handle exceptions, and work with text, binary, and XML data.

#4: A solid grounding in database programming
You can’t create business applications without handling databases. So this book teaches you how to use C# 2010′s tools for rapid application development, like the data sources feature and data handling controls. It also includes introductions to ADO.NET coding and to LINQ, a feature that lets you query almost any data source…not just databases…using the C# language.
Powerful stuff that’s glossed over in a chapter or two in most other C# books.

#5: No side-stepping of business requirements
This book presents complete, non-trivial applications that illustrate what you need to know on the job. Studying applications like these is the key to mastering C# development, but you won’t find them in many other C# books.

#6: Practice exercises solidify your skills
The exercises at the end of each chapter let you apply what you’ve learned, giving you valuable, hands-on experience. And because we provide the starting points for these exercises here at our site, you get the maximum amount of practice in a minimum of time.

#7: Paired pages make learning a breeze
If you haven’t ever used one of our books before, you may want to download a sample chapter before you buy. If you do, you’ll discover why programmers are so impressed by our "paired pages" format and why college students ask their instructors for Murach books. Not only does this format make learning easier and faster, but it also makes this the ideal reference book when you’re on the job.

#8: 100% guarantee
Like all our books, this one is backed by our 90-day trial period and 100% guarantee. It must teach you C# 2010 the way the best professionals use it, or send it back for a prompt refund.

[ You can get it HERE ]

I wanted to take the opportunity to share a couple of resources that I’ve been finding usefull.

J.D. Meier (from our Patterns & Practices team) lives an alternate life as a management guru.

He writes about his work in the space here http://sourcesofinsight.com./

He’s also written a great book – “Getting Results the Agile Way.”

http://gettingresults.com/

If you really don’t want to buy the book you can read it all on line.

Check it out and start planning for 2011 to ROCK !

I’m a huge fan of Murach’s books in general. I like books that I could teach a course from.

This book is no exception, but I’m blogging about it for a particular reason.

I recently wrote a blog post about our choices for developing Web Applications on the Microsoft platform.

Choosing between ASP.NET–WebForms, MVC, WebMatrix – Choice is a GOOD thing.

I’ve been saying since the first release of ASP.NET MVC that WebForms is not dead and someone in the Twitterverse even referred to me as “Microsoft’s WebForms Apologist”

No matter what you choose for your web development stack, you’ll need a sound understanding of HTML and CSS AND the relationship between the two.

If you’re somewhat new to web development or have always relied on the WebForms controls for output – this book will give you a great start. If you’ve written HTML and CSS from scratch this book will be an easy read for you and may fill in some of the gaps.

As I’ve been focusing on developing jQuery expertise I’ve found this book useful to keep on my desk and refer to.

Click [ HERE ] to check it out.

Yes, C++ is alive and well and as I always say, you just can’t go wrong with a Murach’s Book.

This is the book I would choose if I were going to teach a course on Managed Code C++ programming.

It starts at the beginning and works it’s way through OO concepts to advanced C++ 2008 language features and practical practices like working with events, XML files, etc.

Of no small interest, and one of the big advantages of doing .NET programming with C++ can be found in chapter 19 : How to work with legacy “C” and native “C++” code.

[Get it HERE ]