Outstanding! Comprehensive, accurate and crisply written - By AE
This is an fabulous book! Here are some of things I liked best.
1. It's very well structured. Many books I read try to introduce multiple concepts in each chapter. This book, by contrast, deals with just one topic at a time (e.g. "HTML", "CSS", "Javascript", "Forms", etc), with each chapter building progressively upon the learning of the previous chapters.
2. It's very focused. You won't be distracted with anecdotes and jokes: to the contrary, every word is targeted at teaching you precisely what you need to know.
3. It's sparingly written - which means the author manages to cover a huge amount of material in less than 500 pages.
E.g. the paragraph on radial gradients in CSS will tell you that the syntax takes a parameter for the shape and that the first parameter determines the starting position of the gradient expressed in pixels, etc ... but from there on it's up to you to try it out yourself. In other words, the author will tell you precisely what you need to know ... but it's then up to you to put that knowledge into practice and to experiment so as to
4. It's very comprehensive.
5. It's accurate. I've not yet found any errors or typos.
6. It's clearly written and easy to understand (even when the topics are technically difficult).
It's important to note that this is NOT an elementary "build your first website" book, and is probably not well suited to someone who isn't technical and who hasn't done at least basic website development or programming.
However, it's the perfect book for someone who learned HTML long ago or who is familiar with back-end technologies and who now wants to quickly and thoroughly learn to implement the latest and best front-end technologies.
My technical co-founder and I both bought a copy and have been working through it at the same pace. In just a couple of weeks - reading and then implementing every exercise - the book has transformed our web applications!
Overall, this book is rather like an instruction manual that explains the operations of a very complex piece of equipment. It won't teach you to build a website or a web application if you start from nothing. However, if you already have the basics, and if you know what you want to build, then this book will very thoroughly teach you how to use the tools you will need to achieve anything!
Best recent Technical Resource - By DaveCoast
Excellent beginning, I'm just starting on Chapter 4 and have read bits and pieces throughout the rest of the book. Really pleased with the explanation and beginning exercises. The balance between explanation and technical reference works well. I appreciate that the author doesn't get bogged down with all the possibilities and browser combinations, bla, bla, bla - it is appropriately covered with "Best Practices" - thanks. Chapter 1, 2 and 3 are a great bargain for 10 bucks and I'll reserve further comment till I get through the entire book. The clear, concise, manual type descriptions make this a great learning tool (if you actually type along) and it is pretty fun stuff.
Great insights and advise to a range of topics surrounding HTML 5. Be sure that your reader is fully charged 'cause you won't be able to put it down.
I've enjoyed this book. I've wanted to get back into these technologies. I'm only about 60% of the way through, but it's at just the right level for me. I've been doing HTML for nearly 20 years (really!) but management happened ;-) and I really didn't do much technically as HTML became much more complex and dynamic. While I'd coded in Javascript for small things, again, I didn't do the deep dive. I could spell CSS but that's it. I found this book to be very sensible in the level of detail, clarity of examples and general presentation. I'm up through the chapters on 3D graphics now, and am looking forward to finishing the book.
This book carries a complete and clear explanation about several different technologies, and so it is a perfect start if you have heard about HTML 5 and want to know exactly what it is all about. You can find both definitions and samples, all presented in a simple and understandable way.
I've spent more than $1,000 on software how-to books over the course of my career and have yet to run across a better written one than this. The authors clear understanding of how to progress a reader through the steps of a system so that they get it is both rare and welcome.
I've been writting HTML and CSS for more than 10 years, and even though this book is aimed at those with just basic knowledge of the two I have found it to be just the best intro for this revolution in web site construction. The book is also my first real intro to JavaScript and my fear of using it is now gone.
The web site for the book not only has all the code, it also provides a wealth of links to really useful supplemental material.
Buy the book. Wrox, Apress and the rest could learn a few things from this guy. I only give four stars rather than five because the Kindle edition has a few lines of obscured text here and there. I can paste them into a text editor and read them, but really Amazon...
The combination of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript are a work in progress right now, so the book will surely need updates (Flexible Box Model for instance), but the author makes this clear and provides them. I have already received an update since my initial purchase.
Note from Publisher: The second edition includes the updates suggested by this reader.
