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Review
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Reviewed: January, 2012 |
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Reviewer:
Richard Ruge |
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I found this book to be very well written and appreciate the short and
concise style that the book follows. This is not a beginner’s HTML book but,
with a good resource like www.w3schools.com, you can pass through most
hurdles as a beginner. The topics generally follow an excellent and logical
flow from the basics to the advanced. What I found that stands out in the
book are well-explained context around the topics, good discussions around
cross-browser compatibility, and older browser fallback ideology. The book
is development platform agnostic; i.e. there is nothing specific to Visual
Studio, Eclipse, or Dreamweaver.
The authors do a good job of laying out the context by
giving a brief history of HTML and by asking and answering the fundamental
questions: What is and why do I care about HTML5 and CSS3? They then build
on those basic questions by going over the HTML5 template, page structure,
semantics, elements, etc. I think this gives a great foundation in order to
master some of the more advanced topics that will keep your HTML renderings
clean and uncluttered.
I found that the form input types topic was
informative. This is useful for developers of all platforms of HTML
consumption and includes fields such as email address, number, and color
fields. For mobile developers, this is especially important since the proper
keyboard layout is automatically displayed to the user for input depending
on the input type. No platform specific knowledge is required.
Video and audio playback topics are also started with
the brief history to help lay a solid context for these topics. Browser
support is discussed for the HTML5 video element. Important attributes are
covered for the video element including autoplay, loop, preload, poster,
audio, etc. Also covered is how to support multiple video formats (codecs)
and the order to support those formats. The authors note that HTML5 will
elegantly “fallback” to a more primitive format as necessary here. This
establishes an excellent technique for backward compatibility for the older
(non-HTML5) browsers like Internet Explorer v6 and even IEv5.
CSS3 coverage starts with getting older browsers HTML5
compatible with an HTML5 shiv. From there, it builds on selectors and more
advanced topics like gradients, transforms, transition animations, rounded
corners, and so on. These are all great ways to build a rich user
experience.
Overall, the authors have done an excellent job in
putting what’s important into the book. The book is built for learning speed
and with what’s new in the HTML5 specification. Anyone should be able to
quickly leverage the benefits of HTML5 and CSS3. There’s a lot of substance
in there for those that care about the HTML output with highly effective use
of not only HTML5 and CSS3 but HTML and CSS in general.
Richard Ruge is Microsoft certified since 2002 with the following
credentials: MCP, MCAD (.NET v1.1, Web Apps), and MCPD (.NET v2 Web
Developer). He has worked with all versions of the .NET Framework, Entity
Framework, and SQL Server. He currently enjoys designing and developing
Web-based software for desktop and mobile browsers using Visual Studio 2010
at tw telecom. |
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