Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

The paper-book is printed in black-and-white. This is definitely not, what I expect from a member of the head-first series!

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

There's a saying here in the UK "Its a bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it!".

Well I think this applies to Head First Books - people tend to love them or hate them.

Personally I love them although would not restrict myself to *only* using a Head First book to study any given subject - I would always back it up with a more 'traditional' reference book.

Head First HTML5 Programming is a great book for people who have no prior experience and are beginning their web programming journey with HTML5.

Readers already familiar with web programming are likely to find some chapters a bit redundant although they may offer some helpful revision and a different perspective when viewed in the 'Head First' style.

The new features that are introduced to HTML by version 5 are not really covered until chapter 5 from where the remainder of the book has good introductions to the new topics such as Geolocation, AJAX, Canvas & Video, Local Storage and Web Workers.

My only real disappointment with the book is the one that applies to all electronic versions of Head First books - it is only available in PDF format. PDF is slow and clunky when reading on a mobile device when compared to reading in Kindle format or similar.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

Head First HTML5 Programming by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson is a great book for developers that are looking to start developing web applications and for people that have been out of the web development for a number of years are looking to catch back up with the latest technology. Personally, I fall into the second category. I have been developing applications for a number of years, where I was developing N-Tiered web applications for some large companies. Back then, I was creating web applications using HTML, Java Script, Java Server Pages, Servlets, and back-end server code, which included POJOs, EJBs, etc. Due to a change in job, I have been working on thick client development and there have not been that many opportunities to work on web applications.
Therefore, I decided recently that I wanted to get back into the web development and I have always enjoyed the format of the Head First books and decided that this would be a great way to catch up. This book provided me exactly what I was looking for and I have a better understanding of how the development of web applications has evolved over the years. The authors did a great job in presenting how to work with the DOM using Java Script, the capabilities that the canvas provides, the Web Storage of 5 MB, and the ability to have Web Workers that can perform long running tasks. I feel that all of these features together will make web application development a fun and exciting place to be.
The authors did a great job of explaining all of these great features and more in this book. They provide great examples that you can walk through the design and development process with them as they relate the new features of HTML5 brings to the table. I would recommend this to any developer that is looking at getting into the latest technologies in web development. This would include someone that is brand new to web development or someone like me that spent a number of years in web development and then stepped away from it for a while. This book will get you excited about the possibilities of web development beyond static pages or having your web application transition between multiple pages in order to provide updates to what is being presented on the page.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

By now I have read (or attempted to read) at least 3-4 books on HTML5. I have attended a few webinars by popular speakers as well. However, I have always found myself lost in the details as most books start with a lot of fluff on the history of the web, how it came to be, etc, etc. By the time I was done with the first couple of chapters, I was yearning for the actual stuff and lost interest. Enter the Head First book to my rescue. Finally here is a book that explains visually about HTML5 and makes it a lot of fun actually while learning it. The authors have done a lot of work in the visuals, the humor, and constant reinforcing of concepts via quizzes, Q&A, etc. In short, I just love this book!

The book is huge - around 600 pages on my iPad. However, it is not all words. There are plenty of pictures and puzzles in each chapter. This keeps the reader focused and interested in the contents. It has a comprehensive coverage of HTML5 and JavaScript. Most, if not all, new features of HTML5 are covered like Geolocation, Canvas, Video, Web Storage, and Web Workers. This is an excellent book for beginners and intermediate programmers alike. Have fun while you learn!

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

After the remarkable book, HTML 5 Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim, I decided to try Head First series book on HTML 5 too. Though it says you need to know Javascript and CSS, the second chapter and the appendix sections give the information required.

Like all other books in the series, this book also makes you understand, learn and remember things rather than going by rote. This is a great book for the beginner. It focuses on the basics of how browsers work, how javscript elements are handled, the DOM and other aspects a beginner MUST know.

This book gets a full 4.5 out of 5 stars from me. I have not completed reading the book as I am doing it in parallel with Head First jQuery but it definitely deserves the rating all the same.

I wish the Indian Universities and Schools have the Head First series books as syllabus for computer science students. It really makes learning fun and am sure we will be doing what we actually need to do to have excellent next generation programmers from India.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

Very poor layout which is very hard to follow. There is very little actual content and what is there is hidden behind alot of pictures. This book feels like it is meant to be an intro book to art majors without giving any useful information.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

Head First HTML5 Programming is a great book! For being an instruction book its very effective and is a much more interesting read than most tech teaching books are. The author does a great job of exploring all the new functionality that HTML5 has to offer such as the Local Storage, Canvas, and Geolocation features. The book is very entertaining to read and because of the subtle use of repetition, I found myself not having to refer back to it because I actually remembered the information. Also, since I have a background in mostly C/C++, I was pretty skeptical about the idea of using Javascript, but this book does a good with explaining Javascript and, while I still prefer C++, I'll certainly be using Javascript and HTML5 more now. Overall, a very good book, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking at doing any type of web development or even WebOS development too, as it uses many of the HTML5 concepts which are taught in the book.

Note: I did receive this book as a free blogger-review book, but even with that said, I can unbiasedly say that this is a good book.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

I downloaded the sampler and it became apparent quite fast that had I bought the full book I could not have read past the first chapter. Reading this book feels a bit like watching a hyperactive kid have a caffeine-induced stroke.

There isn't a lot of text going on on any given page but instead a large amount of images(_very_ old clipart?). Actually all the pages seem to be filled with extra 'eye-candy'(A very loose use of the word.) and out-of-place layout gimmicks. All this noise makes the actual content impossible to follow.

As the book actually reminds me of the high-school English text-books I had, I think a high-school student could get by a course on HTML with this book. For anyone seriously wanting a good read, it's not this book.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

So, what's in it for you if you buy Head First HTML5 Programming? Well, you'll get a book that focuses on helping you "get" HTML5 and helping you not to forget what you learned. The authors approach this task by providing short introductions to a topic, such as a particular aspect of JavaScript, and then having you work exercises - some paper and some coding. The authors even encourage you to write in the book. Make sure you have a pencil!

Keeping your interest, and hence your attention, is a strength of the book. (It kept my attention but then maybe I'm easily entertained.) Lots of pictures and notes all over the place? You bet. Its all part of getting the important information about HTML5 that you want to learn (otherwise why did you get the book?) to your brain. Ah, but how to keep the knowledge in there? Now comes the second part of the author's diabolical learning plot!

Once they have your attention the authors help you retain the material by presenting it in a variety of ways and having you do a variety of exercises. If you get the book but aren't going to do the exercises don't waste your money. The exercises are key to getting the knowledge into your head and keeping it there.

HTML5 is the combination of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. The book expects that you know HTML and CSS to some extent and provides very good introductions to JavaScript and its new APIs. The topics covered in the book include:

- An extensive introduction to JavaScript
- Using the Geolocation API in your web pages
- Web apps & JSON
- Being artistic with the Canvas API
- Becoming a video star with the Video API
- Using storage in client browsers
- Using Web Workers to get the job done outside the main JavaScript thread

If you really want to learn the tools to make great HTML5 pages I highly recommend this book. It is aimed to help you learn, have fun while you're learning, and to help you retain this knowledge so you can go out there and do great stuff.

Full Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.

Comments about oreilly Head First HTML5 Programming:

This is another book related to HTML 5. As I really want to learn HTML5 well I am going over through different HTML5 related titles recently. This time, book comes from the Head First's stable. If you know Head First already, you know what to expect. If you are not familiar with the series, everything is just ahead of you.

Book covers, in my opinion, the very basics of the HTML5. This way, you will be able to learn step by step how to build HTML5 based web pages. When it comes to the content, one third of the book is devoted to Java Script. At some point this is important, because HTML5 is heavily based on Java Script. On the other hand, if you are experienced developer, going through all these ifs, whiles and fors will be definitely boring. However, if you haven't done web based development since you are desktop only developer, Head First's way explanation of basics concepts might be useful.

There is one, quite big issue with this book. You will miss the samples. You are not able to download example code which makes it hard to follow the book. This refers to all the places where you simply want to check whether code works or not in your browser.