HTML5 for Web Designers

"How often do you laugh out loud while reading about coding standards? <br/>(a) All the time!<br/>(b) Exceedingly rarely, but I'd like to.<br/>(c) Never. I hate laughter.<br/><br/>If you answered <code>a</code>, I'm afraid of you. Please keep away. <br/>If you answered <code>c</code>, I'm afraid <i>for</i> you. Come here; you need a hug. <br/>Otherwise, this book's for you. Jeremy Keith presents a history of the evolution of HTML5 in a terse, satiric tone that makes this book a must-read for anyone hoping to gain a greater familiarity with HTML5.<br/><br/>The book is the first in the A Book Apart series, and does a good job of setting the tone of brief efficient communication. Each sentence conveys a meaningful bit of information.<br/><br/>Keith's limited code samples provide clear examples of how to promote graceful degradation of audio and video content as well as how to test for browser compatibility with various new HTML5 features. I've even copied a couple of these samples over into a .js and a .css file of my own to form the basis of libraries to make my pages compatible with older browsers. Or maybe I'll just use the <a href="http://modernizr.com/">Modernizr library</a>, which the conclusion pointed me to.<br/><br/>The book will probably appeal to linguists as well. After a history of the evolution of HTML, Keith moves to information about how particular aspects of HTML5 originated or were selected, before progressing to a chapter on the semantics of the language.<br/><br/>If I go on about this book much longer, I'll make it sound boring, and it's really quite a light read. Go check it out!"