I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
HTML 5: Up and Running: Dive into the Future of Web Development
by
Mark Pilgrim
non-fiction that was published by O'Reilly Media on September 7, 2010 and has 207 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
A how-to manual that explores the new offerings of HTML5.
My Take
Interesting, but I didn’t feel that it was getting me up and running!
First, let me say that this is more for an intermediate experienced web designer who already is comfortable with coding in HTML and CSS although if the book was intended for more advanced users, I don’t understand why he spent so much time on the history of HTML.
I found the whole book uneven with some of his topics too briefly peeked at while others went into much greater depth. Pilgrim skimmed the new elements introduced with HTML5, and was as unclear as everyone else in the proper use of
The good parts. Yes, in spite of my whining, there was a chunk of useful information that Pilgrim explained well. I finally grasp how
is supposed to be used and I loved his explanation of a codec. It finally makes sense! Yes!!I enjoyed his discussion of the new tags for forms and, while he did a reasonable job of explaining the tangle of video formats and codecs, it was still a confusing tangle that didn’t get untangled until just about the last sentence. I’ll stay with YouTube for my videos…eek!
The section on microdata. Well, once I researched Google’s Webmaster Tools Help section, Pilgrim’s pages finally made more sense.
He spends quite a bit of time explaining the use of and a decent amount on videos, Local Storage, and the new offline capabilities (I am so looking forward to implementing this one!), but it’s still too far in the future [for me!] to dive into a total dissection of it all.
On the whole, it was interesting, but I’m not sure it’s worth the $30.
The Cover and Title
It’s your basic O’Reilly publication with a white background. HTML5 is in white with a teal green rectangle with some sort of deer perched on top of the rectangle. I suspect it would be a good guess that the deer is meant to embody the Up and Running portion of the title!
As for the title, yes, it is HTML5, but I would beg to differ as to whether it would get me Up and Running. No, I take that back. It did have me running. Running to do more research . . .
