Released in July last year, Matthew David’s HTML5: Designing Rich Internet Applications seems to be rushed to catch the new HTML5 wave. The contents are poorly edited. The sample codes are inconsistent and choked full of obvious errors. The author goes as far as using inline CSS to float elements rather than calling external file or in the page header. This method of coding reminds me of workarounds I have to do inside a CMS, which is not fun at all.

If you’re interested in learning HTML5, Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers is still highly recommended. It’s a concise read, but I return to it again and again. If you want more details with broader topics including HTML5, CSS3, DOM, Microformats and best practices, John Allsopp’s Developing with Web Standards is still an indispensable read.

With over 400 type specimens and diagrams, Designing Type examines each letter in great details. From serif to san serif and from capital to lower case, Karen Cheng discusses the nuances and the characteristics in a font. Her technical knowledge on typography makes this book an indispensable read. Designing Type requires tremendous patience and many re-reads, but without a doubt a must-have text for anyone who is interested in type design.

If I were to teach web design, Brian Miller’s Above the Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design would be my choice for textbook. You won’t learn HTML5, CSS3 or jQuery in this book, but you’ll learn about whitespace, grid, typography and design elements for the web. Miller also provides great screenshots of web sites to illustrate his points. For instance, Apple’s homepage is a perfect example of showcasing products above the fold, which according to Jakob Nielson is where users spend 80% of their time looking for information.

Unlike his previous Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, which was all over the place, Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful focuses mainly on theme development.

To help readers understand how theming works, Hedengren deconstructs WordPress’s default Twenty Ten. He then explains the concept of child theme and how quickly one can build his own based on a parent theme or a framework. The selling point of this book is obviously how to build one’s own theme and Hedengren has done a great job of walking readers through three different sites: semi-static (for small, corporation site), media (for portfolio site) and magazine. He also covers briefly on BuddyPress, a plugin that adds social-networking features to WordPress-powered site.

Because of its flexibility and easy-to-use admin interface, WordPress is a perfect tool for clients who would like to update contents themselves. Smashing WordPress Themes is an excellent guide for web designers who would like to build sites using WordPress as a content management system.

I hesitated to purchase Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog because the book only covers WordPress 2.8. After spending two hours in the bookstore reading it, however, I bought the book. From helping readers understand the core of WordPress including the syntax and the loop to guiding us through the process of theme design and development, Smashing WordPress is a great resource for customizing WordPress to meet individual project requirements. The downside of Smashing WordPress is that it doesn’t delve deep into a certain topic. For instance, the book only scratch the surface on how to use WordPress as a CMS. So if you would like to build an e-commerce site powered by WordPress, this is not the right book for you. If you need snippets of codes or how to accomplish certain tasks in WordPress, this book is very useful. I sure will have this book by my desk when I need to develop a WordPress site.

In Ordering Disorder, former design director for NYTimes.com Khôi Vinh deconstructs his grid-based design in details. The book begins with the concept to help readers understand the basics of the grid and the mathematical formulae. Then Vinh walks us through the process (research and requirements, wireframe, preparatory design, comps and production) as well as explains the terminology (unit, columns, regions, etc.). The heart and soul of the book is in the execution, in which Vinh illustrates his approach to a real-world project from sketches on paper to the final layouts. The real magic is flipping through the pages and witnessing the contents fall perfectly into the grid. With his own art direction, the book itself was designed on a grid. The texts on one side match up with the illustrations on the other side of the same page is not a coincident.

Dan Cederholm’s CSS3 For Web Designers is a strip down version of his excellent Handcrafted CSS. While both books covered transitions, hovering effects, 2D transforms, multiple backgrounds and form enhancement, Handcrafted CSS delved further into useful topics such as CSS reset, framework, float management, ampersand and Ethan Marcotte’s invaluable contribution on the fluid grid. So if you already own a copy of Handcrafted CSS, you don’t need CSS3 For Web Designers. Between the two, I still strongly recommend Handcrafted CSS.

Need a bootcamp train on search engine optimization? Look no further than John Jerkovic’s SEO Warrior. Jerkovic has done excellent job of balancing the art and the science of SEO to help readers understand how major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, see web sites. From registering domain to taking advantage of tools like Google Webmaster to building links to avoiding spams, SEO Warrior is the ultimate guide for anyone who interested in making his web sites play well with search engines and therefore increasing visibility and findability. Definitely a recommendation.

After five years on sabbatical, Miles Davis made a comeback in 1980 and continued to create controversial music until his death in 1991. In The Last Miles, George Cole spent almost 450 pages covering every track from The Man With The Horn all the way up to Doo-Bop. Cole interviewed musicians who worked with Miles and quoted critics who had written about Miles. While Cole’s focused and thorough research makes The Last Miles informative and insightful, particularly Tutu, which alone takes up four chapters of the book, his lacking of “definitive assessment” makes a weak case for Miles’s final decade. Cole informed us both sides of the controversy, but hardly from the author’s point of view. Perhaps Cole is being too respectful of Miles music?

Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington’s Clawing at the Limits of Cool draws an enlightening comparison between the musical innovation of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. From their different upbringing to their fruitful collaboration to their opposite development, the authors illustrate the love, connection, respect and influence between “the Prince of Darkness and the Bearer of Light, each occupying an opposing end of our spiritual and/or iconographic continuum.”