Overview

Personally, I’ve never been keen on video-based learning like this. As such, I wasn’t sure what I’d make of HTML5 Now. It turns out I was pleasantly surprised by the format, the content, and the presentation.

Tantek has an natural, engaging presentation style, and his knowledge of the subject area ranks up there with the best of them. He begins with an interesting historical look at HTML and in turn how HTML5 came to be. This section is full of things you might not know about HTML, let alone HTML5.

A few other thoughts:

• Tantek constantly urges you to get involved and share your experiences.
• The early parts of the DVD contain in-depth background information on elements and attributes.
• Tantek presents a clear, concise introduction to <ruby> and friends, even explaining how it’s worked in IE for 10+ years!
• He introduces his bulletproof HTML5 syntax (using <div>s with class names inside new elements).
• The accompanying booklet effectively takes notes for you so you don’t have to. Just sit back and enjoy!
• The DVD also contains the slides shown throughout the presentation and a PDF of the booklet.
• A few tongue-tied moments help keep it real, not staged or forced. It shows Tantek really cares about the subject.
• You’ll get some good tips on when to use the new elements. Additionally, some elements are more stable since the DVD was released.
• Each section is concluded by a brief summary recapping what you’ve learnt.

Words of warning

As is the case with any book or DVD based on the constantly evolving HTML5 specification, parts of the DVD are now out of date. (It was originally released in July 2010.) Look out for these gotchas:

• Certain sections don’t mention browser support.
• <u> is now a part of the HTML5 specification.
• The WebM video codec didn’t exist at the time of production.
• There is no mention of form attributes and support for the new input types.
• <canvas> is incorrectly described as a vector format (it’s bitmap).
• It’s a shame that Tantek only scratches the surface of <video>, <audio>, <canvas>, and SVG. They each deserve their own DVD!

Summary

I’m still not convinced that DVD is the best format for this type of content. As with print, it goes out of date very quickly. Alternatively, you could simply publish the video(s) on a website and make them available on a subscription basis. That way, outdated information could be updated more regularly. That’s a discussion for another day, though, and I’m sure Tantek would be keen to see it happen.

In my opinion, the DVD is better suited to someone who has some prior knowledge of HTML and HTML5. It’s certainly not for beginners, but it does come recommended. You’ll definitely learn something. I’ll leave you with a video of Tantek (Figure 2) discussing the state of HTML5 at the Voices that Matter Conference just before the DVD was released:

About the book

Four of us doctors have read this book (figure 1) and in our opinion it contains an unacceptable number of errors which makes it misleading to the reader.

• The preface claims "a group called the Web Standards project began developing HTML5 in 2007". It didn’t; it was the WHATWG, in 2004.
• In "spring 2010 .. Microsoft formerly [sic] joined the HTML5 Working Group". Chris Wilson, then lead of Internet Explorer, was co-chair in 2006.
• Page 11 mentions the <m> element. There isn’t one; it was renamed to the <mark> element (as it’s correctly called on page 22) before June 2008, at least 2 years before this book was published July 2010.
• Page 19 discusses the <dialog> element, which was removed from the spec in September 2009.
• Page 27 tells us "The W3C had already begun modernizing the FORM element, called Forms 2.0, before HTML5". The WHATWG started with Webforms 2; the W3C had worked on XForms 1.0.
• There is a <navigation> element used extensively in the chapter "Building a web site using HTML5 blocking elements" — this should be the <nav> element.
• Page 72 tells us “The ANCHOR element has four pseudo classes: link, active, hover and visited”, omitting the focus pseudo-class which is vital for accessibility, as it is applied when a user navigates to a link using the keyboard rather than hovering with a mouse.
• Page 73 says “New to CSS3 is a new extension called pseudo elements”. Pseudo-elements were there from CSS 1.

The book also promotes several examples of bad coding practices:

• <br/><br/> pairs to force new lines
• classitis (<footer class="footerStyle">)
• form <label>s are not accessibly associated with their <input>s
• not using the full vendor-prefix stack (-moz-, -ms- , -o-, -webkit-, [no prefix]) resulting in code that is neither future-proof nor cross-browser
• bad semantics, for example <p class=mainTitleStyle> rather than using an HTML heading

The author’s website is http://matthewdavid.ws.

What I do recommend

So I can’t recommend this book. I can, however, recommend any of the following resources:

• Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers is a brief overview for designers or IT director types
• Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgim
• Professional HTML5 Programming by Peter Lubbers et al is a really good look at the APIs
• Definitive Guide to HTML5 Video by Silvia Pfeiffer
• Tantek Çelik’s HTML5 Now is a good video tutorial.