HTML5 For Web Designers - Cover

Author: Jeremy Keith
Publisher: A Book Apart
Published: 2010
Pages: 87

This book is the first of a planned series of focused instruction on web topics from A Book Apart; it purports to distill the HTML5 spec, a massive document, into a brief introduction in a small package.

As a bonus for ordering from A Book Apart, the book was delivered along with a letter from the A Book Apart crew, thanking the reader for the purchase. It also hints at further books in the same format, covering related topics.

The author is Jeremy Keith, a well-known gentleman in the web industry. He is a repeat author, and is active at conferences – I saw him in action at An Event Apart in Seattle earlier this year.

A Brief History of Markup

Briefly walks through the origins of markup. Starts with SGML, moves though various versions of HTML, touches on XML and XHTML, mentions the XHTML 2 debacle, and finishes with HTML5. Quite a storied history!

The Design of HTML5

Explains the motivations behind HTML5, and how it is built up from the technologies that preceded it. Introduces various changes from previous iterations, including the (much!) simplified doctype, changed semantics of some elements, some added elements, and some that were removed.

The following chapters cover these changes in more detail.

Rich Media

Covers some very interesting features of the new spec, namely the canvas, audio and video elements. These purport to add rich media capabilities without the need for browser plugins. There still remains the issue of which media formats each browser will support, but it’s still exciting to see some progress towards a unified standard markup, as opposed to having to handle differences between embed and object (now that was an ugly one!).

Particularly interesting is the facility each of these elements provide as fallback support for older browsers, as well as the options for styling and scripting.

Web Forms 2.0

This is another exciting area of the HTML5 spec. It provides for a number of enhancements to common form elements, particularly the lowly input element. There have historically been various sub-types of the input; more are being added to provide additional control over input types.

Some attributes have been added to indicate whether a field is required, or should have placeholder text – these behaviours had to be handled by script previously. There are others, but these two will be very helpful.

Additional types of input are available as well: email address, website address, phone number, slider, spinner, colour picker, and more. These have promise to reduce the amount of custom scripting needed to simulate these currently.

Semantics

This chapter discusses quite a few of the new semantic elements available, including the inherent meaning they provide and the types of content they are suitable to contain. They include header, footer, nav, aside, and time. There are more, but these are some of the most prevalent ones.

With these new semantic elements available, building pages becomes easier because for a given type of content, there is very likely a proper semantic element to contain it. It does raise a debate over which element may be the most appropriate, but I consider that a small problem in the face of the new semantic richness.

Using HTML5 Today

In the final chapter, the author provides suggestions on how to begin using the new features of HTML5. Browser support is still spotty, but various elements can be used already, with appropriate styling and scripting, for consistent results. Some specific solutions are highlighted here.

Some tools are highlighted – the W3C validator has been updated to validate HTML5. I’m hoping Firefox’s HTML Validator addon gets similarly updated soon!

The author finishes off by pointing out a number of resources for additional information. These are well worth investigating!

Impressions

I was impressed with the focus of this book. It doesn’t try to be an all-inclusive tome; rather, it covers the most prevalent features of HTML5. The spec is not expected to be fully complete for quite some time, but some bits and pieces can be used today, thanks to certain compatibility features, fallback facilities, and testing for feature support.

As a result of having read this book, I’m starting to write new websites with HTML5 in mind. That means using the new doctype, some of the structural elements, and updated head elements. It will be an incremental process for a while yet, at least until the top browsers get up to date with the spec. Internet Explorer 9 is expected to support HTML5 in a big way, so that browser update may represent a turning point in the uptake of HTML5. I hope so, anyway!

The bottom line: HTML5 for Web Designers provides a straightforward introduction to HTML5. It is concise, and tightly focused on providing enough information to get started. In that regard, this book is a job well done. I look forward to more reading material from the A Book Apart crew.