28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Maintains the High Quality I Expected in a Pragmagic Bookshelf Text, Jan 22 2011
By Andrew D. Lindeman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Paperback)
You can learn the basic new features of HTML5 and CSS3 from a lot of freely available resources. However, this book is invaluable because it goes beyond simply laying out how to use the new features and syntax, focusing more on how to practically use them to better a user's experience on your website. It doesn't simply subscribe mindlessly to the hype surrounding HTML5.
Even more importantly, each feature has a "Falling Back" section that describes how to implement the feature outside of HTML5/CSS3 on browsers that do not yet support it (usually using JavaScript) or how to otherwise best gracefully degrade.
Highly recommended.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hype free, content rich, good fallback coverage. Good to have on hand, Jan 27 2011
By Scott Stewart - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Paperback)
I've been following right along with HTML5 and CSS3 evolution, and am already using it today. Regardless, I still found this book an enjoyable, hype free read on the topics. Good content and samples, nice fallback suggestions. Its a good resource to have on hand.
46 of 63 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wasn't the Right Book For Me / Book Kind of Expects You to Know JavaScript, jQuery etc, April 30 2011
By Gromster Graphics "gromstergraphics" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow's Standards Today (Paperback)
This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. I now wish I had purchased a different book about HTML 5.
If you are a computer programmer or an advanced back-end web developer, I guess this book might be four or five star quality.
However, for web designers (who are more into "front end" designing, not behind-the-scenes scripting) and for graphic designers who dabble in web page design/ web graphics, I can't rate this above a two out of five.
I thought the book would be longer or more in-depth than it is, but most sections in the book are quite short.
I also agree with another reviewer that the book is, aside from one or two humorous spots, quite dull (the author is friendly and does have a good sense of humor, but most of the book doesn't reflect this). Because of the dullness, I almost didn't finish reading it.
Before purchasing any book from Amazon, I first read the product description thoroughly, and I also read the customer reviews, both negative and positive.
If there is a "search inside this book" option available, I look at that too.
I don't have a lot of money to spend, so I have to be sure the book I'm getting will meet my needs. Based on what I saw of this book on Amazon, this looked like it would be good for me.
I do not recall the advertising / description for this book on Amazon (as of April 2011, or before then) stating that one would get the most usage from the book if one has an education in computer programming, jQuery, servers, or JavaScript.
Yet on pages xv-xvi, we are told, "This book is aimed primarily at web developers who have a good understanding of HTML and CSS... I also assume that you have a basic understanding of JavaScript and jQuery, which we will be using to implement many of our fallback solutions..."
I have no training in JavaScript, jQuery, and so forth, so most of the book was foreign to me.
If I had known the book was geared towards those who are experts at Java Script, jQuery, and servers, I would have gone with a different book.
If you've never worked in vector software before, you might find the discussion on Bezier curves in chapter 11, page 217, confusing.
If you're a graphic designer or a web designer (especially a web designer who never took scripting or programming classes), I don't think you'll get much use from this book.
I found some of the content confusing and could not understand it.
Some of the CSS 3 information in this book was okay, but other CSS 3 books currently for sale have a lot more information than this one, and have tutorials and links to additional material.