learning design & development
You can never have too many books to learn the ever-changing world of web design and application development. Below are recommendations of books that I've read and what other designers have used and highly recommend as well.
Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart
by Suhreed Sarkar
Joomla! Explained
by Stephen Burge
Professional Web Design 4th Edition
by Clint Eccher
Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide 2nd Edition
by Barrie M. North
The Web Designer's IDEA BOOK Vol.2
by Patrick McNeil, creator of designmeltdown.com
The Photoshop Anthology
by Corrie Haffly
CSS Anthology
by Rachel Andrew
Fancy Forms Design
by Jina Bolton, Derek Featherstone, Tim Connell
Sexy Web Design
by Elliot Jay Stocks
Handcrafted CSS
by Dan Cederholm with Ethan Marcotte
The SMASHING Book
by Smashing Magazine
More Eric Meyer on CSS
by Eric A. Meyer
Designing Web Graphics
by Lynda Weinman
Designing CSS Web Pages
by Christopher Schmitt
Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide
by Eric A. Meyer
PHP and MySQL for dynamic web sites
by Larry Ullman
PHP Solutions
by David Powers
Advanced Professional Web Design
by Clint Eccher
Bulletproof Web Design
by Dan Cederholm
Web Design in a Nutshell
by Jennifer Niederst Robbins