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Review: HTML5 Designing Rich Internet Applications

Bruce Lawson — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:30:06 +0000

HTML5: Designing Rich Internet Applications by Matthew David (Focal Press)

I’ll be honest and up-front: this is a pretty negative review. I’ve been sitting on it for months, but decided to post it as people have asked our opinion of this book.

Figure 1: Cover of HTML5 Designing Rich Internet Applications by Matthew David

Firstly, it’s true that all books have errors. As well as typos, there are authoring brain-farts (the book I co-wrote with Remy claims there is a element, for example). There is also the risk, when writing on a moving target like HTML5, that the spec will change after the book has gone to press.

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 element. There isn’t one; it was renamed to the 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 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 element used extensively in the chapter "Building a web site using HTML5 blocking elements" — this should be the
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:

pairs to force new lines
classitis (
)
form s are not accessibly associated with their 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
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.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments.

Reviewed by Bruce Lawson, Richard Clark, Oli Studholme and Tom Leadbetter.

Review: HTML5 Designing Rich Internet Applications originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on January 28, 2011.

Reviewing HTML5 for Web Designers

Jack Osborne — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:50:05 +0000

HTML5 for Web Designers, written by Jeremy Keith, is the first book to be published under the A Book Apart brand, founded by Mandy Brown, Jason Santa Maria, and Jeffrey Zeldman.

When the book first landed on my doorstep, I was a bit let down by its meagre length of around 85 pages. I have to be honest, however, and admit I had not done my research before its arrival. From the book’s inception, the publishers stated that they intended to produce something to fill the gap between a blog post and book, something that people would be able to pick up, read quickly, and start implementing straight away.

So I set aside my disappointment and started reading this beautifully crafted book.

HTML5 for Web Designers Book — Image source — used with permission

After reading through it, my opinion has changed. I realise exactly what A Book Apart were aiming to create when they decided on a short format for the series. HTML5 for Designers is split up into six bite-size chapters:

Chapter One: a brief history of markup
Chapter Two: the design of HTML5
Chapter Three: rich media
Chapter Four: web forms 2.0
Chapter Five: semantics
Chapter Six: using HTML5 today

To give you some insight each chapter’s topics, I’ve described them each briefly.

Chapter One

The first chapter lays out the foundations of the book and explains how, as a community, we arrived at the latest iteration of our favorite markup language, HTML5. Keith discusses how HTML was born, the ill-fated transition from HTML to XML (which never happened), the suggestion of XHTML2, and why we write “HTML5″ instead of “HTML 5″.

You might be tempted to skip straight to the second chapter, but I firmly believe that you should read this. It’s vital material, and you’ll almost certainly learn something. (I sure did!)

Chapter Two

Chapter two discusses how to convert web pages from XHTML 1 to HTML5. It also touches on elements that changed in HTML5 and some elements that are absent from the specification.

Chapter Three

In chapter three, the book delves into the realms of rich media and what it means for designers and developers. Keith hints that this chapter could have a whole book dedicated to it (perhaps hinting at an upcoming A Book Apart title?). He does a good job describing the possibilities of and showing a few examples of its capabilities. Although some readers may wish for more depth, this book is of course written for designers, so detail is kept to a minimum.

Keith goes on to explain the possibilities of the and elements, something which many argue will change the way we work with the web. Keith gives great examples on how to introduce these elements into your client work with various fallback options for browsers that lag behind.

Chapter Four

In chapter one, it’s explained that HTML5 started life as Web Apps 1.0 and Web Forms 2.0, which were later merged. So as one might imagine, Web Forms were destined to become an integral part of the HTML5 specification.

Chapter four covers the new elements and attributes for use in forms, including placeholder, required, autocomplete, datalist, new input types, sliders/spinners, and dates and times.

Chapter Five

Chapter five covers semantics (although I feel that this should have been one of the first chapters in the book). Elements discussed include , , , and , as well as the usual structural elements that get used in nearly every site.

Chapter Six

Finally, chapter six discusses the most important question about HTML5: Can we use it today? I trust, as you are on this website, that you will already know the answer to that question.

My opinion of HTML5 for Web Designers

After finishing this book, I discovered that it is in fact quite a gem for anyone starting on their HTML5 journey.

There are undoubtedly areas that could have been expanded further, but the limitations imposed by the authors meant merciless fat-trimming. This is the type of book that you would be happy to keep on your desk as a quick reference manual, a shortcut before diving into the full HTML5 specification.

I would definitely recommend buying this book if you haven’t already. It’s true that great things come in small packages!

Buy the book directly from A Book Apart

Reviewing HTML5 for Web Designers originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on July 27, 2010.