Reddit mentions of CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Black & White)

First of all, for any software development questions you may have, I suggest you post your questions on Stackoverflow because the people there will surely provide you with answers.

Now, for a list of books I recommend:

JavaScript

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide; if you're new to JS, start with this one.

JavaScript: The Good Parts; not a beginner's book, but a must-read if you are going to use JS

If you are going to be using JS, you will most probably be developing using a framework, and for that I seriously recommend mastering jQuery because as they say, you will write less and do more!

CSS

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

Web Usability

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability; the book that shows the users' perspective when viewing a website

Performance

High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers and Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers;if you want to get serious about performance for your websites

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I'm guessing they're pretty outdated right now though.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.

If you haven't read them, check out Dan Cedarholm's Bulletproof Web Design and Web Standards Solutions. It also wouldn't hurt to check out CSS Mastery