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A New Book on HTML5 and CSS3

A New Book on HTML5 and CSS3Over the winter and spring I’ve been pretty busy researching and putting the final touches on four chapters of a new book published by SitePoint.

The book is called HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World and was officially launched on SitePoint this morning (North American time).

Two other authors took part in this exciting new project: Estelle Weyl — who probably doesn’t need much of an introduction if you’re familiar with many conference speakers in the web standards world — and Alexis Goldstein, a well-rounded programmer from Brooklyn.

The book was reviewed and edited by the talented Russ Weakley and the awesome SitePoint staff, particularly Louis Simoneau.

My Chapters

The chapters I wrote for the book are:

  • Chapter 1: Introducing HTML5 and CSS3
  • Chapter 2: Markup, HTML5 Style
  • Chapter 3: More HTML5 Semantics
  • Chapter 5: HTML5 Audio and Video
  • Appendix B: WAI-ARIA
  • Appendix C: Microdata

Estelle covered the chapters on CSS3 and Alexis did the ones on the various APIs that have come to be associated with HTML5.

SitePoint’s tech editor Louis Simoneau contributed quite a bit of good info to most chapters, helping make it a very complete and accurate project.

And Paul Irish generously wrote a foreword for the book, and it is a must-read. Fantastic stuff, and great of Paul to take time out of his busy schedule to do that.

HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World

What’s So Special About This Book?

A few things separate this book from the other HTML5 and CSS3 books that have been released so far.

First of all, this one covers both HTML5 and CSS3, which is pretty unique at this stage. Second, it covers quite a bit of ground across the various APIs (Geolocation, Drag-and-Drop, Canvas, Web Storage, etc.) that not many books do. We also cover SVG, feature detection with Modernizr, and we introduce WAI-ARIA and Microdata in the appendices.

I also think we cover some impelling reasons why it’s safe and highly recommended to start using HTML5 and CSS3 today, and we explain in detail why using these new technologies is not going to “break the web”. We also offer some good advice on fall-backs, polyfills, and browser support.

Not Just for Beginners

Although the book starts out introducing certain concepts related to HTML5 and CSS3, it gets pretty hefty further in, so it fills a void between developers new to HTML5 and CSS3 and those who have been using the basic stuff and want to delve a little deeper. I think there’s a lot in here for experienced developers — even those who have already started using HTML5 and CSS3 to some extent. The book really does cover a lot of ground.

So check out the launch page and the full table of contents to see if the book might be a good fit for you.

Okay, my obligatory self-promotion is over. :)

7 Responses

  1. Ferdy says:

    Didn’t know you were writing a book, will check it out once done with my current one. Congrats!

  2. The book looks really good — strangely, though, Amazon is charging more for delivery to the Kindle than either the publish ebook price or Amazon’s *own* print price… never seen that before!

  3. A bit pricey, but I think well worth the investment.

  4. Ian says:

    Interesting and informative concept wise but I’m a little disappointed. In Chapter 3 so far and haven’t actually begun coding the html5 herald page. Being able to code along and enforce the concept by doing would be a great help.

    Fore example the article code on page 43 is not actually anywhere to be seen in the actual website home page so it must just be conceptual but in scrolling through the next couple of chapters I still don’t see anything that says “ok enough concept, lets actually write the html5 herald so you can see first hand where the concepts fit in to an actual complete web page.” As I read along I am expecting something to that effect, eventually.

    • Hey, Ian. Yeah, that’s a fair assessment. There’s a lot in the book that is not really part of the ‘sample website’ (the “HTML5 Herald”). That sample site is pretty simple and couldn’t possibly contain all the stuff we wanted to cover in the book.

      The Herald is officially begun on page 13 where it introduces the ‘basic HTML5 template’ with the doctype, head, etc. Then, after describing some new stuff in relation to that template, the structure of the page is introduced on page 24. Then it discusses some of the new elements used.

      After that, discussion of the Herald is admittedly sparse. The truth is, that site was just an example to help you see some of the new stuff in action. But I woudn’t focus on that too much. You’ll benefit much more by considering concepts and then applying those to your own projects.

      Based on some of the feedback we’ve gotten on the sample site, I will probably be recommending that for any future versions of the book, the Herald site be left out. It doesn’t seem that prominent, and if we were to try to include every element on it, it would be quite impractical and unrealistic.

      Thanks for the feedback and I hope you enjoy the rest of the book. :)

  5. Reidy68 says:

    …I’m fairly new to web design but thought I would take a look at this book anyway as it’s presumably the way things will eventually go! My question may sound stupid but when following along, would it not be better to have a template for each chapter, rather than have the complete template already built? I assume that I would have to copy only what I need when structuring the Herald at the end of chapter 2? Any advice is greatly appreciated?

    Cheers!

  6. Dapo says:

    A great book here but am also a bit kind of new to web, but this book looks more complex, Please can the next edition come with a simple site with all files needed for practise. Thanks

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