Foreword

HTML5 is a mess. It’s also one of the most exciting technological advances perhaps ever (a big claim, especially for something I just described as a mess).

There are quite a few books, most of them excellent, on HTML5. Some cover the markup exclusively. Some cover markup and JavaScript APIs. Others still focus on a specific development challenge, such as games.

This book is a little different. Rather than simply looking at the what and how of HTML5 (though it does that as well), it endeavors to explain the why and why not of HTML5.

And it’s a passionate, informed, opinionated critique of much of HTML5 to boot.

Along the way, you’ll learn a great deal about HTML5 markup and additional HTML5 features such as the new audio and video elements, the Canvas element, the History API, and related features such as SVG.

But ideally, most of all you’ll learn to think critically about HTML5 as a tool and adopt the good parts, for good reasons, and ignore the less than useful parts, for the right reasons as well.

Luke Stevens has written a book all web designers and developers who care about their code should read. So go ahead and read it!

John Allsopp
Author, Developing with Web Standards
Cofounder of Web Directions
Web evangelist