Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

Introduction
I was all excited when I received this book. I´ve been looking into Canvas briefly but not fully got my head around it. I'm originally a Flash developer with over 10 years of Actionscript programming experience, that has been embracing the transition to Canvas over the past six months.

The Flash parts are in my experience beneficial when starting with Canvas. HTML5 Canvas offer lots of similarities but also many differences. This book describes those differences very well and in a manner a flash developer easily can grasp.

Content
The book contains 628 pages of tips and tricks when working with Canvas. It´s mainly written with game development in mind, but the techniques described in the book do apply on other types of interactive experiences as well. In fact, I would buy this book only for having it as a reference to the mathematical formulas it´s describing!

The first chapters walk you through the Canvas API, text, images, and drawing. The next few chapters deal with math and physics, video, audio, games and mobile. The last chapter introduces the reader to 3D with WebGL and multiplayer.

Every section includes demos and a well-organized walk through of the code, and the routines used are repeated so you can understand the flexibility of the code.

Tone of voice
I really appreciate how the authors make use of a simple language (for a non-native English speaking person like me). Without being all too humoristic or too earnest, even the more complex topics are easy to understand.

Conclusion
HTML5 Canvas is a great resource when transitioning from the Flash platform. But even if you haven´t been working with Flash and Actionscript, I think this book is a good start to learning about Canvas. If you are completely new to programming you might find it hard to grasp all the programmatic terms and examples.

I have read quite a few tech books throughout the years and this one is definitely one of my top 3 picks in terms of structural arrangement and the ease of understanding the concepts described.

I would have liked to give this book top score, but the fact that it is game-focused, brings it down a notch. I would have preferred to see the techniques described in other contexts as well.

All in all, I totally recommend it to anyone interested of learning about the HTML5 Canvas element.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/flashpatric
Malmö, Sweden, April 5th 2012

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

Introduction
A lot of the hype around HTML5 and it's so-called "Flash killer"-ability evolves around the canvas element – an element that makes it possible to draw on a designated area of the HTML-document and update or interact with it via JavaScript.

With the Flash Player abandoning the mobile browsers, this opens an immediate need for a technology, that satisfy the developers desire to create engaging content that goes beyond fading DOM-elements in or out of the page with jQuery – we are talking Physics, object collision and mouse interaction like we are used to on the Flash Platform. This is where the canvas element comes to the rescue, and this book tries to give you enough tools to work with the element.

Tone of voice
The book is precise and consistent in its tone of voice. It is not utterly humorously written, but is keeping a light and positive that makes most the more complex topics easier to swallow.

Content
It is topic based, and all the topics takes you through the main areas of the usage of the canvas element. It starts with simple topics and primitive examples on how to set up the canvas, and how to draw and render text on the elements.

When that is all set, it takes on Physics and animation. Inspired by elder and well written routines from books like "Flash MX 2004 Game Programming", and "Flash Animation – making things move" (FriendsOfEd) they are converting the concepts, so the work in the JavaScript environment.

After a throughout discussion on the other two main areas, where HTML5 is said to lift the Flash burden – video and audio – it goes into creating a game, and discusses many topics surrounding game development: Timers, transformation of elements, Game State Machine etc.

Finally, there is a topic that shows how PhoneGap can be used to make programs, made with HTML and JavaScript, install and work as native Apps on the device. It also gives pointers for further exploration in WebGL (3D-environment) and working with ElectroServer.

Conclusion
For me, it is the first book on the HTML5 Canvas element I have ever read. As an experienced Flash Developer and well wandered in the world of JavaScript, I had no problem following the examples and extract the new knowledge presented in the book. However, this is not a book teaching you JavaScript. You may learn a lot of new JavaScript-stuff along the way, but there is little help when it comes to understanding of function, conditions and loops. Instead you are getting solid information about the do's and don'ts of Canvas-programming.

It is not a beginners book, it's not a reference book, but for an intermediate programmer, you should have no problems at all. When it comes to the physics stuff and game logic, you may have to read it a few times to get your head around it.

Kind Regards
Karsten Vestergaard (ockley)

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

This is best place to start for the foundation in HTML5 canvas you'll need for the future.

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

I love this book it had very relevant information and awesome code examples.

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

This book covers the topic of the HTML5's canvas tag by covering a topic at a time with examples along the way. It starts with the basics of canvas and then starts covering topics such as drawing, text, images, as well as some simple examples of game building including topics such as physics. The examples build with the book and are always complete. Also, the source is available for the examples so you can run them even if you don't want to recreate them yourself.

The book is very clear in covering the topics and should work well to teach someone new to canvas how to use it. I think someone already somewhat familiar with canvas, such as myself, does not get as much out of this book as the plethora of examples make getting to the content slower, and makes using the book as a reference more of a challenge. There was still useful content and the book did help grow my knowledge of the topic.

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

This book covers the basics of using Canvas, but also writing games with Canvas, manipulating audio and video.
I enjoyed the writing, which is very didactic and clear, and the parts on physics and background on games.

Lots and lots of examples, and they're what makes the book so big. To me this is a good thing as you can highlight things directly in the book rather than looking up the code from the website.

The last section that talks about WebGL is a bit outdated, as no mention is made of Three.js which is the biggest name right now. That's to be expected as it's such a new technology.

Overall I think this is a nice book about Canvas, and is a good introduction to gaming in HTML5.

Comments about O'Reilly Media HTML5 Canvas:

This book will teach you how to create HTML5 games and much more along the way. It is packed with lot on exemples on how to manipulate image, video and sound with javascript.
If you always wanted to do what Flash does without using Flash, this is the book you need to read.