A few months back when I posted a huge list of HTML5 tutorials, it got a lot of buzzes and many of us bookmarked and shared it. I consider myself as a newbie in the web designing world and to learn web designing I have collected a lot of Online tutorials and some of the eBooks that are free.
How to deploy the app to the web; Get the book. Read the book online on GitBook, or download it for offline reading in PDF, Mobi, or ePub format. It’s yours to share and copy as much as you’d like under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The Little ASP.NET Core Book will always be completely free. I regularly update the book to add.
There is so much information about web designing scattered everywhere on the internet in the form of blog posts, case studies, and online resources. Here I am sharing my huge collection of 13 free online books and 17 free pdf eBooks that you can download and learn a lot from it.
Web Designing Tutorial Online Books
1. Getting Real from 37Signals
Getting real is one of the most famous books for web designing. It covers everything you need to know to create a faster, smarter and successful web application. The book comes in PDF, Paperback and Online format. Good thing is that the online version is free to read and use. So get some time to read it for sure.
2. Developing User-Friendly Flash Content from Flazoom
This online white paper is for Flash developers but anyone serious about web design/development should read this. It is well written and practical. Showing you how to make your web site from the users’ side of view instead of the designers’ side of view, taking into account how to make it accessible for everyone, all the little things most web developers and designers miss along the way.
3. A Hitchhikers Guide to the Obvious: Web Usability 101
A very small whitepaper but very effective. It provides insight into the web designing ideas and things to care through a few case studies. I found it very interesting to read and an eye-opener. Even if you are not in the web designing field but still I would suggest you read it. If you have your own blog or website, you will find it very useful.
4. Access by Design from Universal Usability Written by Sarah Horton
Access by Design is organized into tight, well-constructed chapters each of which focuses on a key area of design, such as forms, color, and layout. I highly recommend “Access by Design” on the merits of its conscientious but practical promotion of accessibility combined with its focus on functionality and usability.
5. jQuery Fundamentals
jQuery is one of the most widely used Javascript based frameworks for creating exceptional web pages. If you want to learn jQuery that is must for any front-end developer, then this is the best place to start off. It starts with basics and provides all the jQuery functions in a very easy-to-read manner. A good read for beginners.
6. The Web Book
The Web Book is a 350-page book that tells you everything you need to know in order to create a home or business Web site from scratch. It covers everything from registering a domain name and renting some hosting space, to creating your first HTML page, to building full online database applications with PHP and MySQL. It also tells you how to market and promote your site, and how to make money from it. Earlier they used to charge for the PDF eBook but it seems that it’s free now and you just need to subscribe to their newsletter.
7. Designing for the Web
A basic web design book written by Mark Boulton and divided into five simple steps – Getting Started, Research and Ideas, Typography, Colour, and Layout.
8. Web Style Guide written by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
Web Style Guide 3rd Edition can be read online for free. It contains 12 chapters which cover topics about Process, Universal Usability, Information Architecture, Interface Design, Site Structure, Page Structure, Page Design, Typography, Editorial Style, Forms and Applications, Graphics and Multimedia.
9. The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
A classic book in the field of Typographic styles. Indeed the renowned typographer Hermann Zapf proclaims the book to be “a must for everybody in the graphic arts, and especially for our new friends entering the field.”
10. Dive Into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim
Dive Into HTML5 seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards. A must-read for anybody who wants to know the basics of HTML5.
11. Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design
“Shawn Henry lives and breathes accessibility. Her book is everything you’d expect it to be: straightforward, practical, rigorous, and uplifting.” – Comment from Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher and creative director of A List Apart, author of Designing with Web Standards.
12. Search User Interfaces by Marti A. Hearst
This book presents the state of the art of search interface design, based on both academic research and deployment in commercial systems. It has been selected by Search Engine Land as one of the best SEO books of 2009.
13. Web Design Reference Guide by Peachpit
This guide provides a snapshot of everything about Web design. The information in this guide includes reference, news, and access to the Web design community.
Web Design Tutorial PDF Free Download
1. The Woork Handbook by Antonio Lupetti
The book contains posts from the authors’ blog that is very popular among web designers. The eBook is also available on Scribd and it has been selected on Scribd as a featured document.
2. Web Designer’s Success Guide
Web Designer’s Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business.
3. Design Your Imagination by WebGuru India
This free ebook can be termed as a complete and comprehensible guide on website design. Almost every aspect of website design is exemplified in this ebook by representing ample examples. This web design ebook will definitely help beginners to hone their creativity.
4. How To Be Creative by Hugh MacLeod
MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.
5. Introduction to Good Usability written by Peter Pixel
A good and short book defining web design principles and usage of Breadcrumbs, Tags, Drop Downs, Overlays, Icons etc.
6. Taking Your Talent to the Web from zeldman written by Jeffrey Zeldman
Its one of the oldest book on Web designing published way back in 2001. However, it’s good to read and the advice still holds true.
7. Why Design? by AIGA
What designers offer to clients is a way of thinking. The “Why design?” booklet outlines the role of design in business strategy. It seeks a common framework for why design adds value to clients’ interests.
8. The Design Funnel: A Manifesto for Meaningful Design by Stephan Hey
The Design Funnel doesn’t introduce any new tools. It’s simply a roadmap of when a designer can use which tools to stimulate better work. As a matter of fact, many successful creatives use similar processes on a daily basis.
9. Dive Into Accessibility
The eBook can be downloaded as PDF or in the HTML format. It provides basic insight of accessibility of websites and a good read for new web designers as a basic guide book.
10. How Do You Design?
Hugh Dubberly’s book looks at “over one-hundred descriptions of design and development processes, from architecture, industrial design, mechanical engineering, quality management, and software development”.
11. The Vignelli Canon
Massimo Vignelli’s book covers everything you could want to know about typography in graphic design.
12. KnockKnock by Seth Godin
Seth Godin is the founder of Squidoo Lenses, one of the famous web marketing tool used by online marketers. In this book, he provides his inputs to make a successful website. A must read to learn a lot from his experience.
13. Eloquent JavaScript
Eloquent JavaScript is a book providing an introduction to the JavaScript programming language and programming in general.
14. Create Your First Website
This is an eBook for beginners who are trying to create their first website. Its a step by step guide that you can follow and create your own website in very less time. Good for starters in the World Wide Web.
15. Put The Wow In Your Website
Another eBook for startup in website design. A good read for the newbie in website creation and designing field.
16. HTML5 Quick Learning Guide
This guide introduces you to just the main elements of HTML5 that you’ll probably want to use right away. This guide is for those who want to get the basics figured out first, and worry about the finer details later on.
17. Type Classification eBook by Just Creative Design
This book has been made to help you learn the 10 broad classifications of type. These are the basic foundations of what you need to learn to learn typography and it is essential for any designer to know how to classify type.
I hope some of the above mentioned Online Books or eBooks will help you in learning some new stuff of web designing.
-->Download Wingtip Toys Sample Project (C#) or Download E-book (PDF)
This tutorial series shows you how to build an ASP.NET Web Forms application with ASP.NET 4.5 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2017.
Introduction
This tutorial series guides you through creating an ASP.NET Web Forms application using Visual Studio 2017 and ASP.NET 4.5. You'll create an application named Wingtip Toys - a simplified storefront web site selling items online. During the series, new ASP.NET 4.5 features are highlighted.
Target audience
Developers new to ASP.NET Web Forms are the target audience for this tutorial series.
You should have some knowledge in the following areas:
- Object-oriented programming (OOP) and languages
- Web development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Relational databases
- N-tier architecture
To review these areas, consider studying the following content:
- Web Development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, PHP, JQuery
Application features
The ASP.NET Web Form features presented in this series include:
- The Web Application Project (not Web Site Project)
- Web Forms
- Master Pages, Configuration
- Bootstrap
- Entity Framework Code First, LocalDB
- Request Validation
- Strongly-typed Data Controls
- Model Binding
- Data Annotations
- Value Providers
- SSL and OAuth
- ASP.NET Identity, Configuration, and Authorization
- Unobtrusive Validation
- Routing
- ASP.NET Error Handling
Application scenarios and tasks
Tutorial series tasks include:
- Creating, reviewing, and running a new project
- Creating a database structure
- Initializing and seeding a database
- Customizing the UI with styles, graphics, and a master page
- Adding pages and navigation
- Displaying menu details and product data
- Creating a shopping cart
- Adding SSL and OAuth support
- Adding a payment method
- Including an administrator role and a user to the application
- Restricting access to specific pages and folder
- Uploading a file to the web application
- Implementing input validation
- Registering routes for the web application
- Implementing error handling and error logging
Overview
This tutorial series is intended for someone familiar with programming concepts, but new to ASP.NET Web Forms. If you're already familiar with ASP.NET Web Forms, this series can still help you learn about new ASP.NET 4.5 features. For readers unfamiliar with programming concepts and ASP.NET Web Forms, see the additional Web Forms tutorials provided in the Getting Started section on the ASP.NET Web site.
The ASP.NET 4.5 provided in this tutorial series includes the following features:
A simple UI for creating projects that offers support for many ASP.NET frameworks (Web Forms, MVC, and Web API).
Bootstrap, a layout, theming, and responsive design framework.
ASP.NET Identity, a new ASP.NET membership system that works the same in all ASP.NET frameworks and works with web hosting software other than IIS.
An update to the Entity Framework enabling you to:
- Retrieve and manipulate data as strongly-typed objects
- Access data asynchronously
- Handle transient connection faults
- Log SQL statements
For a complete ASP.NET 4.5 feature list, see ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release Notes.
The Wingtip Toys sample application
The following screenshots are from the ASP.NET Web Forms application that you create in this tutorial series. When you run the application in Visual Studio, the following web Home page appears.
You can register as a new user, or sign in as an existing user. The top navigation has links to product categories and their products from the database.
If you select Products, all available products are displayed.
If you select a specific product, product details are displayed.
As a user, you can register and sign in with Web Forms template default functionality. This tutorial also explains how to sign in using an existing Gmail account. Additionally, you can sign in as the administrator to add and remove products from the database.
Once you've signed in as a user, you can add products to the shopping cart and checkout with PayPal. The sample application is designed to work in PayPal's developer sandbox. No actual money transaction takes place.
PayPal confirms your account, order, and payment information.
After returning from PayPal, you can review and complete your order.
Prerequisites
Before you start, make sure the following software is installed on your computer:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 or Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017.
The .NET Framework is installed automatically.
This tutorial series uses Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017. You can use either that or Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 to complete this tutorial series.
Note the following about Visual Studio:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 and Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017 are referred to as Visual Studio throughout this tutorial series.
Visual Studio 2017 is installed next to any older versions already installed. Sites created in earlier versions can be opened in Visual Studio 2017 and continue to open in previous versions.
The first time you started Visual Studio, it is assumed you selected the Web Development settings. For more information, see How to: Select Web Development Environment Settings.
After installing the prerequisites, you're ready to begin creating the Web project presented in this tutorial series.
Download the sample application
You can download the completed sample application at anytime from the MSDN Samples site:
Getting Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and Visual Studio 2013 - Wingtip Toys (C#)
This download has the following items:
- The sample application in the WingtipToys folder.
- The resources used to create the sample application in the WingtipToys-Assets folder in the WingtipToys folder.
The download is a .zip file. To see the completed project that this tutorial series creates, find and select the C# folder in the .zip file. Save the C# folder to the folder you use to work with Visual Studio projects. By default, the Visual Studio 2017 projects folder is:
C:Users<username>sourcerepos
Rename the C# folder to WingtipToys.
Note
If you already have a folder named WingtipToys in your Projects folder, temporarily rename that existing folder before renaming the C# folder to WingtipToys.
To run the completed project, open the WingtipToys folder and double-click the WingtipToys.sln file. Visual Studio 2017 opens the project. Next, right-click the Default.aspx file in Solution Explorer and select View In Browser.
Take a ASP.NET Web Forms quiz to review content
After completing the tutorial series, take a quiz to test your knowledge and reinforce key concepts. Each question provides an explanation and links to additional guidance.
Tutorial support and comments
For questions and comments, use the Q and A section included on the Getting Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and Visual Studio 2013 - Wingtip Toys (C#) sample page.
Comments on this tutorial series are welcome. When this tutorial series is updated, every effort is made to consider corrections or suggestions for improvements.
If an error occurs, the corresponding error messages could be confusing, with no good explanation on how to fix it. For help, you can check the ASP.NET forums. Another good source is the Q and A section in the Getting Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and Visual Studio 2013 - Wingtip Toys (C#) sample page.