Customer Reviews

Introducing HTML5 (Voices That Matter)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

HTML5 is creating more and more a name for itself in our industry, but while it excites those on the cutting edge of web technology, many are left feeling uncertain about it. Its ongoing development has been victim of politics, fragmentation and more, leaving few to have a good grasp of its current status. However, a lot of the technologies that make up HTML5 (and more) have become mature, even implemented across all the latest browsers--but did you know that? If you've kept an arms length to everything going on with HTML5, now is the time to dive into its waters and explore.

Fortunately, you don't have to do it all by yourself: just get Introducing HTML5, written by Bruce Lawson (Opera) and Remy Sharp (Left Logic).

Exactly as its name implies, Introducing HTML5 is an introduction to all the new semantics and application-oriented technologies that make up the HTML5 spec. You don't have to be a web development expert to read this, but you'll come out closer to one when you've finished. All you need is a good grasp of web standards-based techniques, e.g. semantic markup; separation of structure, presentation and behavior; and accessibility. Bruce and Remy will teach you everything you need to know to bring your skill set to the next level.

Starting out light, Introducing HTML5 first teaches you the most important new HTML5 elements and their semantic purposes, which is especially helpful if, like me, you kept an eye on these since the early stages of HTML5, but got confused as their meanings were changed or redefined.

The book continues with the new HTML5 Forms, serving as a nice segue into the more JavaScript-reliant HTML5 Audio and Video, before it hunkers down on the real new technologies in HTML5, starting with Canvas and going all the way to the Messages, Web Workers and Web Sockets APIs.

Throughout the book, Bruce and Remy do a great job at not just introducing the new technologies, but informing you exactly of what does and doesn't work in which browsers. Even the latest releases of browsers have some glaring bugs here and there, but where fixes are available, they are presented, and where not, workarounds explained. As a result, Introducing HTML5 is a tremendously practical book, going well beyond a surface-level introduction and straight-up teaching you how to wield these new technologies today.

One thing I am personally very happy about is how the book teaches you how to implement things in an accessible way (via ARIA or otherwise), making sure that visitors to your sites aren't left out. HTML5 is exciting, but our excitement shouldn't come at the cost of accessibility--and following Bruce and Remy's advice, it won't.

The compact but dense information in Introducing HTML5 means that in just an afternoon or two, you'll find yourself brimming with new knowledge, excitement and ideas for making your websites or web applications richer, more exciting and more powerful. All in all, a highly recommended read.

Rarely is it a joy to read a tech book. Yes, the information you glean may be a wonderful, if it helps you increase your skills, but the book itself can be fairly mundane. This book blows that mold apart. I found myself chuckling my way through it, looking forward to the next little wise-crack. And lest you think it's a couple good writers without a lot of knowledge--think again. The information is top shelf as Bruce and Remy have been involved with the development of HTML5 and absolutely know their stuff.

Read it cover to cover or skip around in the chapters as a reference--it's well laid out, logical and highly informative. They don't mince words about what works and doesn't right now. As a front-end developer myself, I'm extremely into the practical--what can I implement in my work now--what needs to wait? This book has enough pages to really give you a feel for this evolution of HTML as well as some of the new APIs that will soon be at your fingertips.

As to the previous people removing a star for the book's printing problem--while I get what you're saying, it's a shame to make this book seem like any less than 5 stars. It's about the information. I got one of the messy books (they've been reprinted now) and to be honest, my books look like that in no time anyway--well the good ones that I dog ear anyway. ;) It's a shame the printer flubbed the first run since anything other than a 5 star average for this book is just wrong (many won't read the reasons and will just look at the overall average).

Regardless of the initial issues, this book is a must have in the library of anyone that is keeping their eye on the future of our craft and wanting to stay ahead of the masses.

It's hard to find informative books these days because it seems everyone claims to be a Web standards expert, and bookstores are filled with reference books that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. This book is different. It's written by two people who actually know what they're talking about and live and breathe what they're writing; it shows.

Many have recently purchased "HTML5 for Web Designers" by Jeremy Keith. It covers many of the things described in this book and does a very good job, but it's not long enough to go into any necessary and helpful detail as it's only 85 pages. This book only costs a few more dollars and is more than double its size and detail. I'd strongly suggest buying this book instead of that one.

"Introducing HTML5" is far from a stuffy reference manual as it contains lots of little jokes within to maintain the reader's full attention, and there's not so much there to make the book seem silly. The book is, while not overly wordy, extremely informative. Mostly what is the most important part of understanding HTML5 are the semantics that are involved in using the new elements, and the book goes into great detail with plenty of examples on exactly how to markup documents using the new elements HTML5 provides. That's only just a portion of the book. WAI-ARIA, Audio and Video, Canvas, Data Storage, Geolocation, etc. are all also presented in ample detail.

The only complaint I have about the book has to do with the printing quality itself. The cover of the book I received has a semigloss treatment on it which was badly applied to the paper as it can easily be rubbed off, leaving unsightly fingerprint marks and abrasions where its been touched. On the contents of the book the printer didn't seem to be bothered by mundane things such as press registration; some of the code examples are difficult to read because of the bad printing quality.

I'm unsure if I just received a bad copy, but it's the reason why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. However, content is king, and the content itself is more than worth the price.

It seems that one way of making sure your web site is ultra cool and can do anything you ever wanted it to with no browser problems whatsoever is to use HTML5. Or, at least, that's what a rather worryingly high number of publications and web sites might have you believe. The reality is somewhat different, though. HTML is an evolution, not a revolution, and while it attempts to standardise a number of practices that developers have been using over many years, it won't necessarily fix existing problems. Actually, using some HTML5 will introduce fresh problems if you don't apply it right. What you need, then, is a book that takes a pragmatic approach, doesn't sell it as a cure-all fix, identifies the nasties and even sticks its neck out when it feels that the HTML5 spec has got it wrong. I say 'it' but of course, this is a book written by real people, in this case Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp. Both have been very much involved with the development of HTML5 and its related technologies, and there are few people who I'd trust more to give you the real picture.

I began reading the book with the full intention of zipping straight through but found myself repeatedly putting it to one side while muttering to myself "I can implement that now, shouldn't take long". This is a good thing - none of your 'cloud cuckoo land' thinking here, just sensible advice and examples that you, as a web developer, can implement now or at least be starting to experiment with.

Technical books are not always the most enjoyable of reads. It may be a cliché that techies can sometimes be a bit weak in the area of easy-to-understand communication (and, some might argue, personal grooming) but this is not an accusation that you could level at Bruce or Remy. Reading this book is educational but also fun. You can just tell that the two of them had a few laughs while writing their respective chapters and also seeing which colloquial phrases (with dubious double meanings) they could sneak past the editors (the answer to this is 'quite a lot'; I won't reveal them, you can find them for yourself!). If you find sitting in a seminar room with amphitheatre style seating, learning from a stuffy professor (possibly bearded, maybe wearing tweed blazer) a bit difficult, perhaps you'd prefer a straight talk down the pub with a couple of guys who really know their stuff and will enthusiastically explain it to you as long as the bar remains open, then this is the book for you.

I purchased this when it first came out any only today actual read the book. I skipped the chapter on Canvas for now. First, the book is a great introduction. I intend to read one or two others in the next few days. It gave me a condensed overview of the philosophy, API's, and sticky spots in HTML5 as of the date of writing (and I realize some has changed since then and a new version can be pre-ordered). I for one enjoyed the very brief humor when it reared its head -- it was not offensive or mean spirited (and I found it quite clever) so I'm not sure why the the violent reaction by some who have rated this book. To the contrary, it held my attention through would inevitably be a dry topic. I value the author's opinions -- this is not a text book. I value when they are excited or are beaten down by a particular aspect of the spec or it's current implementation. I do take a small amount of issue with how bogged down the book can become at times with some rather meaty examples (usually around long passages of JavaScript to handle some "edge case"). If you need a primer to get you up to speed of the major parts of HTML5 without a lot of hands on exercises, but filled with observations from people who seem to know what they're talking about then this book is for you. That described me -- at least, the me who needed a first pass at the topic matter. Now, on to a second and subsequent reference for more details.

If I was to describe this book in five words, the review title says it all.

As an early (but not as early as Bruce or Remy) adopter of HTML5, I know a fair bit about the subject matter but after reading this book I realised how much I didn't know. As well as talking about the well known new features of HTML5 such as video, audio, canvas and forms, Bruce and Remy also delve into such diverse topics as ARIA (for accessibility), data storage, offline applications, the (nasty) drag and drop API and even the geolocation API (even though it's not strictly part of HTML5).

The book is littered with clear explanations and well written, amusing, sometimes weird, coding examples. There is no glossing over the fact that HTML5 is far from perfect, and that the HTML5 specification itself isn't finalised and therefore subject to change but the authors do a great job of keeping the content interesting and fresh.

It's a refreshing and honest approach to a technical book and one I highly recommend to web developers either new to the world of HTML5 or wanting to find out more.

Even if we introduced HTML5 in our projects more than a year ago in our company, we are still surprised about the information that this book provides us with. There are plenty of tutorials on HTML5 on the Internet but few seem to be complete and well structured. This is exactly what this book does for us, it provides a complete and well structured reference on HTML5 with a great professional approach and real life examples.

I used it as a reference when dealing with our mobile applications for which we've built a heavy frontend interface with HTML5. The HTML5 Audio/Video, Geolocation, Canvas and Data Storage sections were very helpful.

You can find robust information on Web Sockets in the the Real Time chapter. If you haven't started using them in production yet, then you should.

I've been always confused about the new goodies that HTML5 introduced for Web Forms. Well, this book made them very clear for me now. Using the new HTML5 Form tricks saves you a lot of Javascript scripting and hacking time.

But wait, how about the old browsers? Is HTML5 worth using in production while old browsers don't support it? Should we do double work for providing a complete HTML structure for other browsers that don't support HTML5? Apparently not. This is what the last chapter of the book teaches us about - polyfilling and patching old browsers so that you can be sure your Web interface works well on all browsers. Polyfilling saves you a lot of time.

This book is a concise yet a complete and practical guide to what's new in HTML 5. Each NEW feature of HTML 5 is covered, and a history of how the new standard was developed provided. There are small but complete examples and lots of references for enhanced learning.

I found the book practical in that you can begin HTML 5 development after reading the book and by using the provided resources make sure it works in ALL browsers (yes even IE).

I knocked off two stars because there are two missing elements to the book: source code for download and a PDF version (I would even pay a small extra fee for that option).

If you want a concise but complete primer to HTML 5 this is a good book to purchase. It does assume you know something about prior versions HTML.

(yes I know the tags in the title won't alter font)

I recently purchased several books ranging from CSS3 to HTML5 to more specific things like jQuery and WordPress. In the bunch this book got left on the side, because I believed I had already read it. I progressed through the pile, making mental notes, and writing gems down. When I found this book to be empty of margin notes, and any abuse to the binding or cover, I was curious and started reading through it, or 'back' through it as I believed at the time.

I quickly started appreciating not only the content, but the structure. I found myself staring things, making notes in the margin, etc. This was going to be my go-to HTML5 book. It was not my only HTML5 book, I actually had purchased 3 well recommended books on the topic. I won't mention those other 2 books by name because I don't want this to come across as a brand loyalty review or anything. I want to make it clear that this is simply what it is at face value; a customer who stumbled upon a book that offers everything I was looking for in a reference, and it offers it in a well constructed format, with plenty of thought and example put into its pages. Of the 3 books on this subject that I purchased this was by far the smallest of the 3, at least in number of pages. In usefulness it was by far the most broad, yet well refined and concise reference.

I highly recommend this book. It has a wealth of information in its pages, and expresses and explains the why and how of things. Rather than simply saying an element was depreciated it talks about the why; how it was used in HTML4 and why it isn't necessary in HTML5, what it might have been replaced with, and why. There are plenty of other HTML5 books worthy of a spot on your shelf, but this one stays on my desk.

Great intro to HTML5. If you are new to web design, this isn't the book for you. But, if you want more than just a cursory introduction to HTML5, with good examples and plenty of links to further info on the web, this book is for you. Previous reviews cover the details quite well. Content is a solid 4 stars, bordering on 5.

My complaint is with the printing. As noted, it's horrible. I've looked at three copies of this book now, from three different sources. All have matte surfaces that haven't been applied well--they peel off and/or smear off if they get just a little wet. Interior color is brown and orange, but the difference between the two colors is so subtle that it's hard to tell them apart unless you view in plenty of light. This is bad because there are times the color of the text is used to indicate changes from one code example to another. Registration for the "color" printing is horribly off. More than half the color text is blurry. And again, this affects the code examples throughout the book.

In short, production values ruin what is otherwise a terrific HTML5 primer.