As developers we’re constantly tasked with keeping up with coding techniques, learning new technologies, and sorting out the “wow, that’s awesome” from the “not actually useful because of IE6, etc”. With HTML5 being the latest game-changing industry buzzword we’re once again forced to dig through all the clutter. Thankfully, Jeremy Keith has done the digging for us.

I blogged about Jeremy’s DOM Scripting book a couple of years ago and when I read that book I thought that he’d done the seemingly impossible. He took a convoluted and confusing subject and made it simple and accessible.  With this new book, Jeremy has done the same for HTML5.

There’s no shortage of information on HTML5 (a Google search currently showings over 8 million hits).  What there is a shortage of, is practical information… How (and when) should we actually start using this?

HTML5 for Web Designers is short at only 85 pages and that’s a good thing.  It’s not an in-depth analysis of the specifications.  It’s a quick “here’s what you need to know” guidebook for developers to hit the ground running.

All of the requisite topics are covered:

• web forms
• canvas
• multimedia
• new / updated tags
• new structural elements
• accessibility and ARIA

The book also details how to use all of the above with a “progressive enhancement” approach so you can start using new features but still provide fallback options for older browsers.

If you’re a developer and looking to stay on top of your game, consider this a must-read.

Buy a copy from the Book Apart website.