Introducing HTML5 (Voices That Matter)

[Book Review Team]

Author/s    : Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp
Publisher   : New Riders Press
Category   : Web design, HTML and JavaScript
Review by : Deepak Bala
Rating        : 8 horseshoes

The world of the web is changing everyday. The introduction of HTML 5 into the midst makes life more interesting for the average web developer.

This book is very hands on with HTML 5. It begins by answering the question 'Why are we here ?'. The content then eases into various topics like 'The semantic web' / Form validation / Working offline / Audio and video / Geo location etc.

At around 200 pages long, you can whiz past this book in a few days. The pages are however full of practical content and advise. The topics are also presented with a developer's perspective in mind. For example as I read the about 'Offline storage / cache', the problem of debugging popped into my head. After a few pages the authors were describing how to manually debug / clear the cache.

The 2 things this book could have done without are...

1. The authors try really hard to introduce humor where it does not belong. That threw my concentration off sometimes.

2. There were repeated attempts in all chapters to use external APIs / hacks to finally get a HTML 5 feature working. Given that most browsers are still adopting the specs, I wonder if this is really necessary.

Overall I had a lot of fun reading this book. I am certainly more enlightened that I was a week back. If you need a quick intro to HTML 5, this is the book you want.

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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

More info at Amazon.com