While trying to streamline my growing book collection, I thought to do a post on the books that have been most useful. So here goes:

• The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez
  Useful both as a reference book and a source of advice from the trenches. Covers Rails 2. Smashing.
• The ZEN of CSS Design by Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag
  The definitive CSS showcase.
• Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action by Dave Crane, Bear Bibeault, Tom Locke
  Work with Prototype and Scriptaculous? You need this.
• jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault, Yehuda Katz
  As above but for the jQuery javascript library.
• DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith
  Absolutely recommended as an intro to working with the Document Object Model.
• Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
  Lots of useful CSS tips and tricks.
• Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith
  Very friendly in-depth intro to ajax. Useful even if you use a framework.
• RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby
  The title says it all. Web Services the modern way.
• Rails Cookbook by Rob Orsini
  If you need to choose just one Rails recipe book, choose this.
• Don’t Make Me Think! by Steve Krug
  Engrossing usability and user interface design book. Read it from cover to cover in a day.
• PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra
  All you need to get started with Object Oriented Programming with PHP 5.
• Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas, David Hansson, Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, James Davidson, Justin Gehtland, Andreas Schwarz
  The “official” rails book. Has everything you need to get started with Rails.
• Rules of Management by Richard Templar
  Lots of useful advice for managing resources.
• Php|architect’s Guide to Programming with Zend Framework by Cal Evans
  Currently the only Zend Framework book on sale and it’s really good.
• No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP by Thomas Myer
  Very good. Walks through an article management project while introducing different aspects of XML with PHP.

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