HTML5: The Missing Manual [PDF]

What You Need to Get Started

This book covers HTML5, the latest and greatest version of the HTML standard. And while you don’t need to be a markup master to read it, you do need some previous web design experience. Here’s the official rundown:

• Web page writing. This book assumes you’ve written at least a few web pages before (or at the very least, you understand how to use HTML elements to structure content into headings, paragraphs, and lists). If you’re new to web design, you’re better off with a gentler introduction, like my own Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, Third Edition. (But don’t worry; you won’t be trapped in the past, as all the examples in the third edition of Creating a Website are valid
  HTML5 documents.)
• Style sheet experience. No modern website is possible without CSS—the Cascading Style Sheet standard—which supplies the layout and formatting for web pages. To follow along in this book, you should know the basics of style
  sheets: how to create them, what goes inside, and how to attach one to a page. If you’re a bit hazy on the subject, you can catch up in Appendix A, “Essential CSS.” But if you need more help, or if you just want to sharpen your CSS skills to
  make truly cool layouts and styles, check out a supplementary book like CSS3: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland.
• JavaScript experience. No, you don’t need JavaScript to create an HTML5 page. However, you do need JavaScript if you want to use many of HTML5’s most powerful features, like drawing on a canvas or talking to a web server. If you have a smattering of programming experience but don’t know much about JavaScript, then Appendix B, “JavaScript: The Brains of Your Page” can help you get up to speed. But if the idea of writing code sounds about as comfortable as crawling into bed with an escaped python, then you’ll either end up skipping
  a lot of material in this book, or you’ll need to fill in the gaps with a book like JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland.