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If you’re taking a break off work over Christmas and New Year’s, then you’d better stock up on books to read on your Kindle or iPad or even good old paperback!

To grow as a WordPress designer, I try to read as much as possible, and not only focusing on WordPress related books, but also other web design related topics.

Here is a short list of books I have read recently or are on my wish list:

Neuro web design

Neuro Web Design

Neuro Web Design : What makes them click
Effective design will increase the efficiency of your website and lead to more conversions or subscriptions.
The author of Neuro web design takes us inside the mind of our visitors and explains the reasons behind the behaviours and what makes effective design.
A must read for all website owners and designers alike.

Web design for ROI

web design for ROI

Web Design for ROI
After reading this article: Should You Blame Your Designer For Poor Conversion Rates?, and this one : Style versus design, I wanted to get a deeper understanding of the real purpose of design applied to the web. What are the most effective strategies that we can use to make our designs more cost effective for the client. I think this book must have some of the answers.

Web Analytics 2.0

Web Analytics 2.0

Web Analytics 2.0
Most people have installed a Google analytics plugin in order to get statistics for their website. Most website owners focus on the number of visitors and never explore further. The Google Analytics dashboard can be intimidating, as it offers so much information. But if you want to really understand the why, the when and the what, then you should read this book. Learn how to go from pure statistics to analytics and understand what your visitors are doing and why.

Features that I want from my ideal software:

1. Target elements like with the Firebug inspect element tool to rapidly select element for which I wish to change the CSS
2. Layout and typographic grid overlays with easy controls for resizing, and as an added bonus, remember the settings per document
3. Embedded browsers for instant preview like Firebug does, but be able to select any rendering engine I want.
4. FTP editing
5. some kind of integrated version control, but with a GUI, not command line
6. a graphical interface for setting CSS3 properties such as gradients, borders, colors,etc… that will generate vendor extension syntax if necessary

First I tried several Firebug extensions that allow to save changes, but they all fail in some respect because they work on calculated CSS, which means that they will only save the CSS used in that particular rendering. You’ll lose the webkit specific declarations, media queries, etc…

I also tried using the Web developer toolbar which has an edit CSS panel with a save button. It has several bugs that make images and backgrounds disappear and other rendering problems.

I also gave Stylizer a try, which comes very close to what I need, except it relies heavily on a GUI for nearly everything, so it’s not up to date with the latest CSS3 properties. If they had a more basic version, which would allow manual coding instead of using the GUI, it may be a winner.

TopStyle also came very close, except the preview browser is internet explorer 8. They tried to include support for Safari and Gecko, but it’s experimental, not supported and I couldn’t get it to work anyway, it crashed everytime.

During my research, I found this article by Jason Santa Maria : http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/a-real-web-design-application/, which comes to the conclusion that there is a need for a web design application for designing in the browser.

I also found a web app called quplo , but it’s very buggy at the moment, I couldn’t make it work.

another web app called buildorpro :
It isn’t open to sign up yet.