Books, Articles & Videos

A complete reference book on ASP.NET Web Forms with almost 2,000 pages.

The most comprehensive book on Microsoft’s new ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET 4 Unleashed covers all facets of ASP.NET development. Led by Microsoft ASP.NET program manager Stephen Walther, an expert author team thoroughly covers the entire platform.

The authors first introduce the ASP.NET Framework’s basic controls and show how to create common site-wide layouts and styles. Next, they cover all aspects of accessing, presenting, organizing, and editing data. You’ll find thorough and practical sections on building custom components and controls, providing effective site navigation, securing sites and applications, and much more. This book presents hundreds of realistic code examples, reflecting the authors’ unsurpassed experience with ASP.NET both inside and outside Microsoft.

ISBN-10: 067233688X, ISBN-13: 978-0672336881

A short book that summarises the new features of HTML5 well.

HTML5 continues to evolve, browsers are implementating at break-neck speed and HTML5 web sites spring up like flowers after rain. More than ever, you need to get acquainted with the powerful new possibilities in web and application design. That is why we have crafted a second edition of this book to help you stay on top of current developments.

This book shows you how to start adapting the language now to realize its benefits on today's browsers. It concentrates on the practical problems HTML5 can solve for you right away.

ISBN-10: 0-321-78442-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-321-78442-1

An excellent guide to using CSS3 in the correct way to ensure that web pages are as fluid, flexible and reliable as possible

Whether you're a Web designer, project manager, or a graphic designer wanting to learn more about the fluidity that's required when designing for the Web, you'll discover the tools to create the most flexible, reliable, and bulletproof Web designs. And you'll finally be able to persuade your clients to adopt innovative and effective techniques that make everyone's life easier while improving the end user's experience. This book's seven chapters deconstruct various aspects of a case-study Web site for the Tugboat Coffee Company, focusing on aspects that make it bulletproof and demonstrate progressive enrichment techniques over more traditional labor-intensive methods.

ISBN-10: 0-321-64338-0, ISBN-13: 978-0-321-64338-4

The ASP.NET MVC 4 Framework is the latest evolution of Microsoft’s ASP.NET web platform. It provides a high-productivity programming model that promotes cleaner code architecture, test-driven development, and powerful extensibility, combined with all the benefits of ASP.NET.

ASP.NET MVC 4 contains a number of significant advances over previous versions. New mobile and desktop templates (employing adaptive rendering) are included together with support for jQuery Mobile for the first time. New display modes allow your application to select views based on the browser that's making the request while Code Generation Recipes for Visual Studio help you auto-generate project-specific code for a wide variety of situtations including NuGet support.

ISBN-10: 1430242361

Excellent value for money this guide to using Dreamweaver CS5 is very well illustrated in full colour. I like it as a quick reference guide and I always think pictures are worth a thousand words. However it is not a tutorial based guide and is better as a reference guide.

ISBN-10: 0273740628, ISBN-13: 9780273740629

I think the best tutorial based approach is Teach Yourself Dreamweaver CS5 in 24 Hours. It matches the course lessons much better, it focuses on the basics, and has the highest customer rating in Amazon. The one drawback mentioned by customers is not going far enough. So you may need a more advanced book later

• Start using HTML5 in your web pages with Dreamweaver's new HTML5 support
• Create forms to collect information from users at your site
• Manage your site with templates and libraries
• Design web page layout with CSS
• Work with WordPress and content management systems
• Display data efficiently with tables
• Dress up your site with Flash files and other multimedia
• Insert scripted functionality by using Behaviors
• Use Ajax frameworks and libraries
• Create custom CSS for mobile devices and printing
• Make web graphics in Fireworks CS5

ISBN-10: 0672333309, ISBN-13: 978-0672333309

This book has good reviews and can be used as a source of tutorials and as a reference guide. It does however cover topics that are well outside the scope of this course but may be useful later, i.e. Database and Javascript.

• Get complete guidance. Go from building your first web page to creating interactive, database-driven sites
• Build skills as you learn. Apply your knowledge using 12 tutorials and downloadable practice files
• Create a thoroughly modern website. Build fast-loading pages based on powerful, easy-to-use CSS tools
• Add instant interactivity. Use pre-packaged JavaScript programs to add forms, drop-down menus, and more
• Tap into databases. Connect your site to a database and build pages that display the information
• Discover hidden tips and tricks. Learn undocumented workarounds and shortcuts
• Have it your way. Customize the way Dreamweaver looks and works to suit your needs

ISBN-10: 1449381812, ISBN-13: 978-1449381813

The 18 project-based lessons in this book show readers step-by-step the key techniques for working in Dreamweaver CS5. Readers learn what they need to know to create a professional website without having to delve into code.

There is also a companion DVD that includes videos on Dreamweaver and files to use in the lessons. There however some dissatisfied customers who complain of it being difficult to understand as it assumes prior knowledge of CSS.

ISBN-10: 0273740628, ISBN-13: 9780273740629

An article by the same author as the Introducing HTML5 book. This is a good illustration of how to code semantically using thye new HTML5 tags

Embed native HTML5 video into your pages without plug-ins, and provide Flash-based fallback content for legacy browsers. Opera's Vadim Makeev shows the way

Want to add video to your site? HTML5 enables us to do this as easily as placing images with an <img> element and in this tutorial, we'll show you how the magic is done

If you're building a prototype for the web, it makes sense to build it in its natural environment as it provides as real an experience as you can hope to achieve. Understanding how to build your designs can also give you a greater affinity with developers; they'll be more open to your ideas and able to communicate theirs better too.

It also has the benefit that you can take full advantage of all the web has to offer. Your prototype can adapt to the width of the browser window but a graphic wireframe can't. This is useful when demonstrating how your site adapts at different screen widths

This article first appeared in issue 211 of .net magazine - the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers.

Sass is a style sheet language that makes your style sheet as beautiful to read as your web page. Core contributor to Sass Christopher Eppstein explains how to use it and maintain style sheets with Sass

If you've ever been tasked with the job of writing and maintaining the style sheets of a medium-to-large website, you know that it is no small feat. CSS has a very simple syntax. Too simple.

The simplicity of the syntax and lack of indirection were intended to make CSS more accessible to non-programmers. It was a nice idea in theory, but in practice it is a failure of monumental proportions.

Add beautiful, rich and cross-browser compatible typography for your page designs using @font-face and CSS

Ever since the web started, designers have desired to bring the beauty of their favourite fonts into their designs. Unfortunately, we've been limited and just been able to use a handful of web-safe fonts (fonts that most computers will have installed) for the dynamic text in our designs, leaving using images or flash movies of non web-safe fonts as our only resource for bringing them alive on the web

This site offers an easy way of adding placeholders of any size to your prototype pages. Simply add code such as http://placehold.it/200x120

In this tutorial a Visual Design is turned into a template page using HTML5 and styled using CSS3. It does however use too many images undecessarily to style parts of the page, in particular buttons. CSS3 can do the job without images.

Are you interested in HTML 5 and what's coming down the pipeline but haven't had time to read any articles yet? Brad Neuberg has put together an educational Introduction to HTML 5 video that goes over many of the major aspects of this new standard, including:

• Web vector graphics with the Canvas tag and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
• The Geolocation API
• HTML 5 Video
• The HTML 5 Database and Application Cache
• Web workers

In the video we also crack open the HTML 5 YouTube Video prototype to show you some of the new HTML 5 tags, such as nav, article, etc. It's chock full of demos and sample source code.

This video is the first of three showing you how you can best use HTML5 to structure a typical web page using the new HTML5 tags.

This video is the second of three showing you how you can best use HTML5 to structure a typical web page using the new HTML5 tags.

This video is the third of three showing you how you can best use HTML5 to structure a typical web page using the new HTML5 tags.