I recently finished this book and it is definitely worth a recommendation. It covers a broad range of topics concerning different technologies and frameworks for developing modern HTML sites and applications. The thing that appealed to me most about this book is its pragmatic and hands-on approach. Unlike many other books it does not start off with dozens of introductory pages about HTML, CSS, JavaScript and all that beginner’s tutorial stuff but it takes the reader straight into the middle of things. And as the title promises it provides recipes (of course there are 42 of them) for typical tasks and requirements a web developer has to deal with. It comes with the necessary amount of source code and explanation but avoids going into deep detail about the frameworks used in the recipes. That way it provides the perfect starting point for getting started with a new framework or technology.

The book consists of 7 main chapters each of which containing between 5 and 10 of these recipes. Also, each recipe spans just a few pages so this book is an ideal read if you just want to spend the occasional few minutes on it. The recipes do not depend on each other, so you can really jump through recipes and chapters the way you prefer.

These are all the recipes as they appear in the table of contents:

• Eye Candy Recipes
  • Recipe 1. Styling Buttons and Links
  • Recipe 2. Styling Quotes with CSS
  • Recipe 3. Creating Animations with CSS3 Transformations
  • Recipe 4. Creating Interactive Slideshows with jQuery
  • Recipe 5. Creating and Styling Inline Help Dialogs
• User Interface Recipes
  • Recipe 6. Creating an HTML Email Template
  • Recipe 7. Swapping Between Content with Tabbed Interfaces
  • Recipe 8. Accessible Expand and Collapse
  • Recipe 9. Interacting with Web Pages Using Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Recipe 10. Building HTML with Mustache
  • Recipe 11. Displaying Information with Endless Pagination
  • Recipe 12. State-Aware AJAX
  • Recipe 13. Snappier Client-Side Interfaces with Knockout.js
  • Recipe 14. Organizing Code with Backbone.js
• Data Recipes
  • Recipe 15. Adding an Inline Google Map
  • Recipe 16. Creating Charts and Graphs with Highcharts
  • Recipe 17. Building a Simple Contact Form
  • Recipe 18. Accessing Cross-site Data with JSONP
  • Recipe 19. Creating a Widget to Embed on Other Sites
  • Recipe 20. Building a Status Site with JavaScript and CouchDB
• Mobile Recipes
  • Recipe 21. Targeting Mobile Devices
  • Recipe 22. Touch-Responsive Dropdown Menus
  • Recipe 23. Mobile Drag and Drop
  • Recipe 24. Creating Interfaces with jQuery Mobile
  • Recipe 25. Using Sprites with CSS
• Workflow Recipes
  • Recipe 26. Rapid Responsive Design with Grid Systems
  • Recipe 27. Creating A Simple Blog with Jekyll
  • Recipe 28. Building Modular Stylesheets with Sass
  • Recipe 29. Cleaner JavaScript with CoffeeScript
  • Recipe 30. Managing Files Using Git
• Testing Recipes
  • Recipe 31. Debugging JavaScript
  • Recipe 32. Tracking User Activity with Heatmaps
  • Recipe 33. Browser Testing with Selenium
  • Recipe 34. Cucumber-Driven Selenium Testing
  • Recipe 35. Testing JavaScript with Jasmine
• Hosting and Deployment Recipes
• Recipe 36. Using Dropbox to Host a Static Site
• Recipe 37. Setting up a Virtual Machine
• Recipe 38. Changing Web Server Configuration Files with Vim
• Recipe 39. Securing Apache with SSL and HTTPS
• Recipe 40. Securing Your Content
• Recipe 41. Rewriting URLs to Preserve Links
• Recipe 42. Automate Static Site Deployment with Jammit and Rake