Real World Adobe Photoshop CS3
by Bruce Fraser & David Blatner
Yeah, we all know that Photoshop CS3 is out but until there's an update to this, Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2 remains one of the best all round Photoshop books there is.
(And now that co-author Bruce Fraser is dead there may be a while before we get to see an update.)
Fraser and Blatner have been in Desktop Publishing forever and the late Fraser was a reknowned digital imaging expert.
This book doesn't waste your time by pretending that every feature is equal, they dish the dirt and hand out accolades where appropriate. It also features a very good guide to setting up colour management.
Dreamweaver 8 : The Missing Manual
by David McFarland
Excellent all round reference for Dreamweaver 8, probably soon to be updated for Dreamweaver CS3.
Author David MacFarland takes you from the inital planning stages of your site right through to publication and even connecting to databases.
The book has strong editorial content, candid opinions on functionality and solid tutorials.
CSS Cookbook
by Christopher Schmitt
This is a super handy reference for all those hard to remember CSS tricks.
Can't remember how to do image replacement?
Never sure how to handle lists?
CSS Cookbook is a source book for over a hundred quick fixes. Recently updated to include Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.
Web
Design in a Nutshell
by Jennifer Niederst
Jennifer
Niederst's book is designed to be a desktop reference for
designers migrating from print to the web. She writes efficiently
without any kind of padding - this book isn't intended as a tutorial.
She's a tiny bit more fascinated with the Mac than is maybe necessary but
that said her info is generally good.
I like this book a lot - it's clearly arranged and covers a fair amount of ground from basic HTML through to more complicated issues like Server Side Includes and coverage of various graphics issues. However it looks dull.
Cascading
Style Sheets: Designing for the Web
by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos
Håkon
Wium Lie and Bert Bos have been responsible for developing the CSS
specifications since they were first conceived back in 1993. Here,
under the banner of the World Wide Web Consortium, they spell
out their intentions for CSS, how it's supposed to work along with full explanations
of all CSS 1 and 2 style attributes.
Unusually for a book of this ilk it's attractively laid out and despite some fairly unforgiving language is the best guide to CSS you're likely to find.
The sad thing about the book is that you realise what a superb design project the creation of CSS has been and it seems a shame that something so well concieved can have been so badly impletmented.