Mark Pilgrim Archives : Global Nerdy

Want to get started developing sites and web applications that run on all modern browsers, including the upcoming Internet Explorer 9? You’ll need HTML 5 (along with CSS 3 and JavaScript) and a handy guide like Mark Pilgrim’s new book, HTML5 Up and Running.

If Mark’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s written all sorts of great guides, from Dive Into Python to Dive Into Accessibility to Dive into Greasemonkey to Greasemonkey Hacks, and much of his work is available as both for-pay books and free books off his website.

Today and today only (Friday, August 20, 2010), you can get the ebook version (PDF, ePub and mobi) of HTML5 Up and Running for just USD$9.99 (it normally goes for USD$23.99). Just go to the HTML5 Up and Running page in the O’Reilly site, order the ebook and use the discount code DDHUR when you check out!

(And while you’re at it, take the latest platform preview of the HTML5-ready Internet Explorer 9!)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Dive Into HTML 5

If you’ve decided to learn HTML 5 and are looking for a good introduction, I can’t think of a better starting point than Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML 5. If Mark’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’ve heard of his books Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility. As you can see, he’s taken a theme and he’s running with it.

Dive Into HTML 5 covers a number of topics, including:

A quite biased history of HTML 5. Not necessary for HTML 5 development, but if you’re the sort of person that likes to know the “back story”, Mark covers it quite nicely.
Detecting HTML 5 features. Your web apps will need to know if the browser they’re running in supports specific HTML 5 features, and this chapter covers that.
What the various tags (especially the new ones) mean.
Drawing on the <canvas>. Now supported in IE9!
The <video> element. Also supported in IE9!
Geolocation.
Local storage. Native client apps have had this as an advantage over web apps, but not anymore!
Forms.
Microdata.
and coming soon: chapters on threads and web sockets.

Mark has a knack for explaining things, so I’m always happy to point people to his books. I consider Dive Into HTML 5 to be pretty comprehensive; you could create a course based solely on the material in this book, and thanks to the licensing, you can!

Dive Into HTML 5 is available for free online and is a work in progress. It seems to be largely complete with only a couple of missing chapters, and when it’s done, it’ll be available in a couple of forms:

For free, online
For money, in the form of an O’Reilly book

As with Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility, Dive Into HTML 5 is published under a Creative Commons “By” 3.0 license. You can freely share the contents of the book and even take it and adapt it any way you please: into your presentations, into a lecture or blog article series, or even your own book on HTML 5 – as long as you give Mark credit for creating the original work.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.