2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Book, 10 Oct 2011
By ClearCSSJimmy - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 Guidelines for Web Developers (Paperback)
As an experienced web developer who was self taught on HTML 4, I had unfounded reservation about HTML5 in general. Maybe it was the fact that the standard was changing and that I had to learn something new from scratch. Thankfully this was not the case.
After reading HTML5 > Guidelines for Web Developers by Forster and Oggl, I was confident in my ability to design evolving HTML 5 compliant sites.
The writing style is concise and easy to read. The topics covered, are not necessarily meant to be followed in order. One can skip and read about a certain subject.
The first chapter is brief and in my opinion doesn't really add value to book. The book really starts at Chapter 2, "Structure and Semantics for Documents." One of the biggest change is that HTML5 is the fact that one no longer has to create div sections with classes name footer, header, etc. Now one can use <header> and <footer> to name a few.
Another great chapter is Chapter 3, "Intelligent Forms." The authors do a good example on how to use the different elements as well as handling validation. New data types are introduced such as url, email, datetime, color, etc. Attributes are introduced as well. Some of the code is minimal but it does help the web developer understand them.
On Chapter 5, "Canvas," the authors spend some time going over what they call, "One of the most interesting and at the same time one of the oldest new HTML5 elements," Canvas. It is presented in a neat and concise manner. Again there is minimal code but it does what it is suppose to do, get the web developer up to speed.
Overall, HTML5 Guidelines for Web Developers is a decent book. By no means is this book the must have all in one book, but it is a great book on getting to know most features of HTML5. I definitely recommend it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A thorough HTML5 introduction for developers, 6 Oct 2011
By I. Devlin "Ian Devlin" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 Guidelines for Web Developers (Paperback)
This is a decent introduction to HTML5 for any web developer as the title states, it is definitely not aimed for anyone who is not technical in any way. As mentioned by another reviewer, the inclusion of the examples showing you how everything talked about can actually be used, is a great help.
I've written a lengthy review at: [...]
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good but no full reference, 18 Sep 2011
By Rob Spoor - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 Guidelines for Web Developers (Paperback)
After an uninteresting itroduction (do we really care about all the meetings that lead to HTML5?), the book finally starts with why I got it - all the new features! Starting with semantics, the new form input elements and audio/video, the book contains a very lengthy chapter on the new canvas; 71 of the 290 pages are dedicated to this subject. This is caused by all the images, code snippets and, well, many features of the canvas. It's quite an impressive and overwhelming chapter.
After that lengthy chapter you get the complete opposite in the SVG and MathML chapter. There are just 5 pages, and they don't really cover much, stating that these topics require books of their own. This chapter could and should have been omitted.
Next are some more interesting chapters about geolocation, web / offline storage, web sockets, web workers and microdata, to end with a catch-all chapter with all the remaining stuff the authors wanted to mention. Although there are nice features in it, but the chapter feels incoherent.
All in all it's a good book that describes quite a bit of new features. Just don't expect a full reference of what HTML5 does and does not have. Also, be prepared to read a lot of JavaScript. If you don't know it, several chapters are going to be hard to understand.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of JavaRanch. This review has previously been posted on JavaRanch.com.