By the time you read this, Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke should be available to order from Five Simple Steps. Stop reading here, go to the site and make sure you secure yourself a copy of this book.

Bought it? OK, continue.

You might know Andy from reading his previous book, attending one of his workshops, seeing him speak, or from following his ramblings about country music on Twitter.

To me, Andy is like a mentor. When I started out in webdesign and asked around for good books to read, his name kept popping up, and I’m sure a lot of people reading this owe much of their knowledge to him. He’s up there together with other big names like Cameron Moll, Simon Collison, Andy Budd, Dan Cederholm, Dave Shea, and of course, Jeffrey Zeldman. All great designers, and even better teachers.

A couple of months ago Andy called me up around midnight, asking if I was interested in tech editing a new book he was writing. I almost fainted. After I remembered how to breathe again, I told him it’d be an absolute honor. I considered myself on top of all the latest CSS techniques and conventions, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Little did I know I was in for a harsh ego check.

The book covers everything a self-respecting web designer should know. It is by far the best book about web design I’ve ever seen. Multiple times while going over the book, Andy completely lost me. I had to educate myself on the techniques he was talking about. Hardboiled Web Design isn’t just another book on webdesign, it’s the bible of webdesign. It raises the bar for other books, and for us, mere mortals. It changes everything.

Even though I’ve already read the entire book front to back, I’m gonna make sure there’s a paper copy of it sitting on my desk as a reference. Speaking of the printed version of the book (it’ll also be available in PDF), it comes with an A2-sized print of the wonderful cover designed by Kevin Cornell. Hurry, because there’ll only be 2500 copies available.