LincolnBlogs

This has been a hard review on me in a lot of ways. The first being I found it very difficult recently just to get the time to put into this, and secondly, and more importantly, I just plain suck at Javascript 🙂

This is not the first book on HTML 5 I have reviewed for Pearson, I reviewed the HTML5 Developer’s Cookbook previously, and I hope to be able to review more, because I am just not very savvy with this yet. Thankfully, this really has nothing to do with the book itself though. The book is layed out very well, like all the rest of their “Unleashed” series and I particularly appreciate their orange chapter tabs on the sides of the pages. This helped me a lot as I was flipping back and fourth trying to figure out what I was messing up this time.

The author, Simon Sarris, does a really great job of laying the book out in a sensical manner by first explaining the new stuff in HTML 5 and conceptualizing things a bit before moving into the easy things like working with the new layout and tags on to adding new audio and video goodies and then, where they leave me in the dust, working with canvasing, geolocation and other more advanced APIs.

This book gives really good examples and color illustrations and exercises to follow along with. Just exactly what I need in my HTML 5 learning quest, without being overly wordy, long and over complicated, or too technical. I found it helpful and, with some further practice, I can make better use of it than I do now. For a paltry $45 (retail) you’ll certainly get your monies worth.

And since I mentioned practicing this, it bears mentioning that Pearsons InformIT has just released a flagship new product called a “Learning Kit” which is “a self-paced electronic course that integrates text, graphics, video screencasts, and interactive quizzes into one complete tutorial.” Delivered in zip format it’ll run in any HTML 5 compatible web browser. And to top that off, they are letting me play with the one that goes with this subject, “Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours (Learning Kit)“, which is freaking awesome, because I surely need it.

This stuff is the distance learning wave of the suture my friends and my only hope is they keep remembering me when they need a review 🙂 Thanks again, Pearson!