Head First HTML5 Programming: Building Web Apps with JavaScript

The 'Head First' series may remind you of textbooks and scholastic magazines of your childhood, it's packed with silly cartoon captions, puzzles and pictures. In theory this reinforces every concept as it is introduced, helps you learn and retain what you have learned.Of course how you learn best is by doing, and this book does present projects and solutions that simulate this process.What this book is not, is a useful reference for html5 and its new APIs. What it is is a useful tutorial on html5/javascript scripting and the new htm5 APIs.The book is NOT a tutorial on html! because what is new in html5 are primarily it's APIs, and these are accessed by javascript! Html5 IS html4 for the most part, so the html is not covered at all, almost. This book's focus is on javascript and it is a very complete introduction of javascript and the new html5 API's.If you are new to html, you should learn that first, html4, and this book will not help you.I give this book a 5 star rating because I'm a designer and I am new to programming javascript and the approach of this book is one I am comfortable with. It's very introductory and holds my hand. I can learn with this book where another book might fail me in that regard.If you are someone that is already comfortable with javascript, if you are comfortable learning from more traditional books - this book may seem padded with nonsense and the cartoons and puzzles may occur to you as annoying. This likely is not the book for you.If you want a book where you can look up a specific thing, the tutorial nature of the book will fight you.But because no book can be all things to all people, I give it a 5star rating because it promises to teach me, and I am finding this book able to keep that promise.

I really don't know what to say about this book. I'd give it 6 stars if I could. 10 would be better. If they charged 3x the price, it would still be a steal. And I'm not a paid reviewer. I am an ordinary guy, a full-time systems administrator, part-time programmer, who has purchased over 30 IT-related books in his life (I'm a second-career guy who transitioned into IT). This one is an order of magnitude above them all.I've purchased Microsoft books, Wrox books, and the "serious" O-Reilly books, etc; I've read a little of everything. And I can't say enough good about this book. To say that the authors know their stuff cold is an understatement. They're geniuses. I've purchased half a dozen JavaScript books - you know the kind: "Chapter 1 - Functions / Functions in JavaScript can broadly be understood...(yawn)" - and I learned more in Chapters 4 - 6 in this book about JavaScript programming than I did in all the other books combined. Easily.The world (including Microsoft) is moving to the HTML5 standard, and JavaScript is (re-)emerging as an important programming language. I have to stay relevant; my livelihood depends on it. But even if yours doesn't, I still recommend this book. Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with HTML/CSS (and maybe a little JavaScript - you know, like you could learn on W3Schools in an afternoon) will be able to keep up with almost all of this book.The authors do the near-impossible: They take complex and difficult concepts and make them understandable to everyday people. The Head First approach (making learning fun) may seem counter-intuitive to techs, but it absolutely works. I am twice the programmer I was before I started this book. I'm going to buy anything the "Wickedly Smart" duo produce, and my go-to publisher from now on is Head First. Do yourself a favor. Buy this book.

I used to use HTML many years ago, and then I started working on Java server code for many years. I decided to learn more about what can be done with just front-end code. I was surprised by how much has changed.If you know a bit (or more) about HTML and desire to know how JavaScript and HTML5 work together to make dynamic web pages, this book is a great starting point.In addition to this book you might need another reference on CSS or HTML tags. If you are a person who only knew an older version of HTML from 5 or more years ago you might think you just need a reference book on the new HTML5 tags, but knowing the tags without knowing JavaScript leaves out many of the great features of HTML5.Ever wonder how to change just part of web page without reloading the whole page without using the dreaded frame tag, then this book might be for you.This book is a fast read in terms of pages read per time reading. This is because there are many cartoons and diagrams (both convey meaningful content). So in terms of leaning per minutes reading this book is very good.If you know nothing about HTML this book might be hard to follow, but not impossible. If you know at least the basics of HTML, then this book should be OK.