HTML5: Up and Running Book

Pilgrim's HTML5: Up and Running (H5UaR) is a short book and has a far more conversational tone than I'm used to with O'Reilly technical books. Both aspects are highly appropriate to the nature of the subject.

Pilgrim's greatest strength in H5UaR is acknowledging the sordid history of HTML support, the sordid present, and the no-doubt sordid future. The first chapter is a wonderful (and interesting) bit of history of HTML and MIME Types. I already felt well-versed in the story, but Pilgrim has unearthed some really interesting tidbits which made me feel contemplative and perhaps a little sad.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 all have chapters titled "What About IE?" which should be taken as a good sign. Building with any web technology is often like erecting buildings upon shifting sands. There are a few bits of bedrock here and there we can count on, but most of the interesting land - the places people want to live on - are out in the dunes. Most browsers just suck, but Internet Explorer blows the sands like that giant storm in the movie "Hildago" we watched just to see what Aragorn of The Lord of the Rings looked like without a beard.

IE is such a Darth Vader of a villain* (complete with Empire-like dominance over the galaxy) to Web developers that to not give it very special consideration in nearly every paragraph of a book like this is to ignore reality to a degree in which all forms of matter are perceived as amorphous cartoon blobs of translucent meta Jell-O. Thankfully, this book does give that consideration.

In addition to giving realistic guidance into the treacherous landscape of cutting-edge HTML, Pilgrim gives compelling arguments for the use of many tags which are not yet supported, but fail gracefully. My only real complaint in this area is that he gives a mind-bogglingly large amount of space to the subject of microdata (albeit, again, with a good supporting argument), a lot of which may never be supported by anything ever.

In conclusion, I will be using selected bits of HTML 5. I really appreciate the level-headed realism and consideration put into this book.

*Netscape 4 was a rotten, sickly thing that deserved to die. But when IE came out of that ring victorious and entered a new world in which it ruled like a king, it didn't handle the success well. It stopped training for the fights. Its muscle turned to fat. It went through a series of failed relationships in which it abused its trophy wives, hoping that something would make it feel good, like it had back in the 3.0 days, the heat of battle. Opera was there, but without market share it was too small, too "indie", IE had no need to fight it. Oh, but it longed for something real. Something substantial to fill the void. Eventually it turned to the bottle. Friends left it. Slowly, its anger turned inward. All the hatred, the unwanted attention, the painful awkwardness at home - all of that compressed into a tight glowing red core of suffering. It got an air freshener in Version 7. Nothing could mask the stench of decay. It was dipped in chocolate in Version 8. Everyone agreed that though it smelled better, there was still something terrible in the meat. It made your eyes water and you couldn't spit that taste out for days. It festers still. IE hates your damned markup and your damned stylesheets. It hates them! It hates them so much!