Book Review: HTML5 Step by Step

Originally submitted at O'Reilly HTML5 Step by Step Good if Starting from Scratch By Tom O from Baltimore, MD on 1/12/2012   Pros: Easy to understand, Helpful examples, Well-written Cons: Omits some details, Too basic Best Uses: Novice, Student Describe Yourself: Designer, Developer This is a well structured and clear book about how to write articles and code using HTML5. If you are looking to create or adjust content for the web and don't really have much experience, this provides good introductory material to get you on your feet. If you have decent HTML knowledge you will want to avoid reading the book cover to cover, because much of the basics are covered here. Particular newer topics you should look at include the newer tags (like article and nav) and the newer input types (like the slider, date picker or spin box). The color picker input type wasn't mentioned, but it only really works in Opera so it's a very minor omission. One slight disappointment about this book was that it didn't discuss some of the other aspects of HTML5, such as offline storage or location services. I understand those capabilities do assume JavaScript knowledge beyond the neophyte level, but mentioning these aspects of HTML5 in passing would've been nice. I did like the introduction to the canvas tag, and how it gave a brief introduction to JavaScript and jQuery to make the first experience fairly simple. Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this through O'Reilly Media. (legalese)