I had the biggest honor to review and write the foreword for the 5th edition of Jennifer Robbins’ book, Learning Web Design. The foreword itself explains why it’s such a huge honor, so here it is:

It was a warm September night somewhere outside of Nashville. The campfire crackled, and because I can’t help myself I plucked away at my acoustic guitar. Based on the laughter emanating from our circle and into the woods, you wouldn’t know that the people sitting around the fire had just met each other a few days prior. Conversation about life, design, music, and technology blurred together, and inside jokes were formed in realtime.

Even the best of nights have to end, and we knew we had important work to do in the morning. So as we trudged back from the fire back to our AirBnB, I asked Jen — who I’d been laughing along with all night — the boring question most people lead with when they meet someone: “so what do you do for work?”

Jenn casually replied, “Oh I’ve written a couple books about web design.”

“Oh nice! What are they?”

“Learning Web Design, Web Design In A Nutshell, and a couple others.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

My eyebrows shot up as my neurons connected the dots: the warm and hilarious person I’ve been hanging out with also happened to be the author of the very first book I ever read about web design. That book, Web Design In A Nutshell, ignited in me a passion for the web and set me on a trajectory in life that somehow led to me to be invited to a post-conference retreat with many of my web design heroes. That retreat then triggered a snowball of events for me that has led to a long career full of success, notoriety, friendship, and an enduring passion for the Web.

Jennifer Robbins changed my life. Her book changed my life. The Web changed my life.

And now, dear reader, you are also reading a book about web design by Jennifer Robbins. I hope Jen’s book changes your life too. Of course, there’s no guarantee that it will — that part is up to you — but know these pages contain the foundational information you need to make incredible things for the World Wide Web.

I’ve now been a professional web designer for 20 years — a full half of my life! — and I’ve learned that there are very few absolute truths in our field. But there are four things about this revolutionary medium that I believe to be true:

The incredible ideals of the Web remain intact: it is a universal, open, and decentralized space where everyone can connect, create, and share knowledge in order to shape a better world.
The Web is always changing.
Learning the fundamentals of the Web will provide you a solid foundation that will outlast many trends, technologies, techniques, and tools.
Making things for the Web is fun, empowering, and incredibly powerful.

In many respects, the Web has changed so much since I first read Jen’s book in the early 2000s. But in many respects, it has not. Technologies have advanced, and we create increasingly sophisticated (and often over-complicated!) digital products using that technology. But irrespective of any complicated systems and abstractions used to create websites and apps these days, the Web still comes alive to its users in the form of trusty-old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

These three languages come together to make the Web work. In addition to being increasingly powerful, these three languages are durable and resilient. These three languages help us enshrine and disseminate human knowledge and utility that can help people learn, grow, get things done, connect, and collaborate. These three languages are beautiful.

Unfortunately, entire generations of designers and developers have skipped right over learning these foundational languages in favor of jumping right into flashy frameworks that undoubtedly look good on a resumé. However, today’s new hotness is tomorrow’s forgotten trend. Frameworks and buzzwords will come and go, but HTML, CSS, JavaScript will endure for as long as the Web exists. Learning these fundamentals will help you — and whatever you create on the Web! — endure in an ever-changing technology landscape.

With this book, not only will you learn core fundamentals about how to make things for the Web, Jennifer will deliver it to you with warmth and clarity. You’ll soon find that it’s like your cool friend Jen is sitting beside you clearly and patiently showing you cool stuff you can do with the web. While this book is comprehensive, it’s not daunting thanks to Jennifer’s friendly nature and clear writing style.

You’re in for a treat. Jennifer’s books about web design changed my life for the better, and this book can do the same for you too — if you allow it. So read this book. Make things for the Web. Share with the world. Repeat.

I’m so excited for you and can’t wait to see what you’ll create.

Brad Frost
Web designer, consultant, author of Atomic Design

So there you have it. What a freaking honor. Share Learning Web Design with anyone who could benefit from better understanding the fundamentals of web design & development (which is everyone!). The book is huge (like phonebook huge!), but it’s quite scannable and packed with a lot of clear examples, exercises, and resources. There’s a reason why book is in its 5th edition.

Thanks for everything, Jen. It’s an honor to be your friend!

A collage of photos featuring different adventures of Brad and Jenn Robbins