Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is the exception to the common conception that most tech books are out of date by the time they are published. HTML5 and CSS3 is relevant to my current daily development tasks. I reference this book all the time to debate on how to implement the html for the current components we build everyday. The book is well written and follows that pragmatic programmer style that makes the purchase of any prag book something I never hesitate about.

This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. I now wish I had purchased a different book about HTML 5.

If you are a computer programmer or an advanced back-end web developer, I guess this book might be four or five star quality.

However, for web designers (who are more into "front end" designing, not behind-the-scenes scripting) and for graphic designers who dabble in web page design/ web graphics, I can't rate this above a two out of five.

I thought the book would be longer or more in-depth than it is, but most sections in the book are quite short.

I also agree with another reviewer that the book is, aside from one or two humorous spots, quite dull (the author is friendly and does have a good sense of humor, but most of the book doesn't reflect this). Because of the dullness, I almost didn't finish reading it.

Before purchasing any book from Amazon, I first read the product description thoroughly, and I also read the customer reviews, both negative and positive.

If there is a "search inside this book" option available, I look at that too.

I don't have a lot of money to spend, so I have to be sure the book I'm getting will meet my needs. Based on what I saw of this book on Amazon, this looked like it would be good for me.

I do not recall the advertising / description for this book on Amazon (as of April 2011, or before then) stating that one would get the most usage from the book if one has an education in computer programming, jQuery, servers, or JavaScript.

Yet on pages xv-xvi, we are told, "This book is aimed primarily at web developers who have a good understanding of HTML and CSS... I also assume that you have a basic understanding of JavaScript and jQuery, which we will be using to implement many of our fallback solutions..."

I have no training in JavaScript, jQuery, and so forth, so most of the book was foreign to me.

If I had known the book was geared towards those who are experts at Java Script, jQuery, and servers, I would have gone with a different book.

If you've never worked in vector software before, you might find the discussion on Bezier curves in chapter 11, page 217, confusing.

If you're a graphic designer or a web designer (especially a web designer who never took scripting or programming classes), I don't think you'll get much use from this book.

I found some of the content confusing and could not understand it.

Some of the CSS 3 information in this book was okay, but other CSS 3 books currently for sale have a lot more information than this one, and have tutorials and links to additional material.

I liked this book. It was easy to read and understand. I liked that the book avoids hype and marketing speak and sticks to a clear description of HTML5 as a platform and as a specification. The author respects his intended audience, presumably people who are currently involved in web design and development and who don't need their hands held with very basic descriptions of JavaScript, jQuery, or basic HTML and CSS from past versions. This book focuses on the new features that are most likely to be useful and exciting to developers: new structural tags and attributes, improved methods for creating web forms, making better interfaces, improving accessibility, and, of course, eye and ear candy in the form of canvas and media embedding.

I usually do not write reviews. This is an exception. I read this book in nearly one go cover to cover. I have been writing a web site to be used by Google Chrome and have been struggling to get clear information about CSS3 and HTML5. The book put every thing into order. It has wonderful tips that I will now add to my site. It is not a total beginners tutorial, you need to know some html, css and javascript to be able to read it in one shot. If you do not know these languages you will have to work your way through the examples and build your knowledge as you go. The examples are simple and are explained very well so you should be able to progress. But in order to master these languages you will need other reference materials. (Brian P. Hogan - well done! I am most likely going to buy your Web design for developers book)

Both HTML5 and CSS3 hold great potential for the future. The problem is today's various browsers implement HTM5 and CSS3 in different ways. Thus implementing HTML5 and CSS3 today will result in uniquely different interpretations in present day browsers.

The main advantage this book has over others is the author shows the reader not only the standards, which browsers implement which standarads, but also how each feature has a work around and how to do it. The sections "Falling Back" describe how to implement the features of HTML5 and CSS3 on browsers that do not yet support the feature.

This book focus more on how to realistically use HTML5 and CSS3 standards today and how to implement workarounds for the browsers that don't implement a certain standard, maintaining the user's experience between present browsers. This book may have a short shelf life as present browsers implement the various HTML5 and CSS3 standards, but for today this is an excellent book for working on today's web.

I like this book, because like all Pragmatic Programers books they analyze every HTML5 & CSS3 properties and tags.

I also like very much that every example followed by a fallback code for IE, and how to use those technologies now-days!

You will not read it as learning book, but you will use it as a great reference book.

Like the others said it was to fast to come out with this book. HTML5 it's not standardized yet and we don't know how is going to be on the future. The book it has some examples that author knows but not the one you need.