HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Pragmatic Programmers) [Paperback]

Brian P. Hogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2011 | ISBN-10: 1934356689 | ISBN-13: 978-1934356685 | Edition: 1

HTML5 and CSS3 are the future of web development, but you don't have to wait to start using them. Even though the specification is still in development, many modern browsers and mobile devices already support HTML5 and CSS3. This book gets you up to speed on the new HTML5 elements and CSS3 features you can use right now, and backwards compatible solutions ensure that you don't leave users of older browsers behind.

This book gets you started working with many useful new features of HTML5 and CSS3 right away. Gone are the days of adding additional markup just to style a button differently or stripe tables. You'll learn to use HTML5's new markup to create better structure for your content and better interfaces for your forms, resulting in cleaner, easier-to-read code that can be understood by both humans and programs.

You'll find out how to embed audio, video, and vector graphics into your pages without using Flash. You'll see how web sockets, client-side storage, offline caching, and cross-document messaging can ease the pain of modern web development. And you'll discover how simple CSS3 makes it to style sections of your page. Throughout the book, you'll learn how to compensate for situations where your users can't take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 yet, developing solutions that are backwards compatible and accessible.

You'll find what you need quickly with this book's modular structure, and get hands-on with a tutorial project for each new HTML5 and CSS3 feature covered. "Falling Back" sections show you how to create solutions for older browsers, and "The Future" sections at the end of each chapter get you excited about the possibilities when HTML5 and CSS3 reach widespread adoption. Get ready for the future---in fact, it's here already.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Brian Hogan has been developing web sites professionally since 1995 as a freelancer and consultant. He currently builds web applications using Ruby, jQuery, HTML 5, and CSS 3. He enjoys teaching and writing about technology, particularly web design and development. He is also an advocate of accessibility for the disabled, particularly as it pertains to the visually impaired. When not experimenting with web-based languages and technology, he's... well, who are we kidding? He's always hacking on something.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (January 14, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356689
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356685
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maintains the High Quality I Expected in a Pragmagic Bookshelf Text, January 22, 2011

By 

Andrew D. Lindeman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

You can learn the basic new features of HTML5 and CSS3 from a lot of freely available resources. However, this book is invaluable because it goes beyond simply laying out how to use the new features and syntax, focusing more on how to practically use them to better a user's experience on your website. It doesn't simply subscribe mindlessly to the hype surrounding HTML5.

Even more importantly, each feature has a "Falling Back" section that describes how to implement the feature outside of HTML5/CSS3 on browsers that do not yet support it (usually using JavaScript) or how to otherwise best gracefully degrade.

Highly recommended.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hype free, content rich, good fallback coverage. Good to have on hand, January 27, 2011

By 

Scott Stewart - See all my reviews

This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

I've been following right along with HTML5 and CSS3 evolution, and am already using it today. Regardless, I still found this book an enjoyable, hype free read on the topics. Good content and samples, nice fallback suggestions. Its a good resource to have on hand.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly disappointed with this one from Pragmatic, May 20, 2011

By 

Colin Ross (San Francisco, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

My office bookshelf has a pretty developed section for my 'pragmatic' bibles as I call them. This series consistently produced texts I felt core to getting a thorough understanding of the subjects they covered. For once, I am disappointed.
While I will admit that the subject (HTML 5 / CSS 3) doesn't quite lend itself to a straightforward explanation-- this book offers little more than what can be discovered reading the W3C Dev Guide ( [...] ) or the actual Spec for adventurous souls with a pretty solid background understanding of web development jargon ( [...] )
The rest of the book is a modified cookbook of How To's -- not being a big fan of cookbook-style development books since nine times out of ten, the 'best practice' of how to accomplish something in the field can turn on a dime with a single blog post by some bright developer, this is where the bulk of my disappointment came from.
With that all said, and after paging through a couple HTML 5 & CSS 3 books at my local bookseller, this book is still one of the better books out there on the subject-- a compliment to the author and publisher.
So, to sum it up, at least in my opinion:
- It doesn't cover the spec in detail, only focusing on the poster child new elements/attributes like <header>, <footer>, <article>, and autofocus.
- It gives you a handful of How Tos in HTML5/CSS3 with examples of how to fallback with javascript for 'older' browsers-- most of which are already supported by the popular javascript frameworks out there like jQuery/mooTools/etc.
- It wastes time on things it even admits are no longer in the html 5 Spec.
Reading the other reviews, it seems others find it invaluable, so maybe its just the difference of being 6-8 years deep in handcoding (x)html/ css / javascript that makes the difference.
Even with that said, I wouldn't even say its a good book for people JUST getting their feet wet in html / css since it doesn't cover them in enough detail to really understand how to properly, semantically markup content and present it to the user.

I eagerly await a 2nd edition of this one-- maybe by then HTML 5 and CSS3 will be more solidly defined and implemented to the point where the author can really make it come to life.