Reddit mentions of Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)

Thanks, I appreciate that. I started doing front end stuff probably 12 years or so ago right when I was finishing college. I got started with these two books:

http://www.amazon.com/CSS-Mastery-Advanced-Standards-Solutions/dp/1430223979

http://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-protecting/dp/0321509021

That's about it, really. I do browse some of the top blogs and try to find inspiration though and see what kind of layouts everyone is doing these days.

I'm guessing they're pretty outdated right now though. Aside from that, I just try to not over complicate things in the design and keep it as simple as possible. I'm not someone who's going to spend hours designing some award winning illustration for the website header; I just try to pick a nice color palette (usually two at most three colors) and then lay out the site with some common sense. One big thing I've found is ensure you're using enough padding/margins. I think too many times people only have 5 or 10px between elements and it makes it really difficult for your eyes to flow over the site. That's just my opinion though.

Hope that helps.

Sorry, ran out of time. Here's the rest of my answer:

If you are more of an engineer and not that interested in design, but in Front-End Development, start with Bulletproof Web Design, following up with Transcending CSS.

For JavaScript, read You Don't Know JS and Eloquent Javascript. (The second edition of Eloquent is going to be released on 17th of november, if you can't wait until then, there's a first edition aswell)

A very important design book I forgot aswell: The Design of Everyday Things.

Good luck on your way to mastering Web Design!

If you want some really good textbooks, check these out:

http://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-protecting/dp/0321509021/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

http://www.amazon.com/Handcrafted-CSS-Bulletproof-Edition-Essentials/dp/0321658531

http://www.amazon.com/Transcending-CSS-The-Fine-Design/dp/0321410971/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333849421&sr=1-1

I completely understand how you feel. I was in the same shoes. I picked up the following two books very recently & finished them cover to cover. I would strongly recommend them to you. Both books are very easy read & should not be a problem to finish them in weeks.

1. Learning web design - Jennifer Niederst Robbins - This is a beginners book on web design.
   2 Bulletproof web design - Dan Cederholm - This is bit advanced & shows best practices in CSS. Again a very good read.
   Finally, my own blog article on HTML & CSS authoring that I wrote a few days ago if you care to read.
   

Yes, you'll need the book. It is a great HTML/CSS book though. If you check the reviews on Amazon you'll see that it's highly regarded.

If you need to wait a few days for the book to arrive, you can order it soon and you should still have plenty of time to catch up in the class. It's not going to be too time-consuming.