Review by : Rob Spoor
Rating : 8 horseshoes
The book follows the Murach style - on the left pages there is text, on the right pages there are screen shots, code snippets, and short summaries of the text on the left. Unlike the previous Murach books I've read, I was never tempted to read only the right pages, as it's all just very good to read.
Although the title is "HTML5 and CSS3", it doesn't limit itself to those new techniques, instead covering large portions of both old and new HTML and CSS versions. That makes the book good for both beginning and experienced web developers. Where needed it also mentions how to create workarounds for browsers that don't support HTML5 and CSS3.
Though in general HTML5 is discussed pretty well, it does fail in a few chapters. These all require knowledge of JavaScript, yet the authors claim this isn't is necessary. I disagree with them. The sections on GeoLocation and Canvas are nowhere near as complete as the previous HTML5 book I've read, and that's really a shame. The JQuery chapter is by far the worst, showing several snippets of code but explaining very little. I'm an experienced programmer, and I once was really wondering what the code was doing because it wasn't explained properly. Surprisingly, the JQuery Mobile chapter is a lot clearer, but that's probably because it actually contains very little JavaScript as JQuery Mobile does a lot under the hood. All in all, I'd definitely suggest getting a proper JavaScript / JQuery book to fill these gaps.
Finally, one thing really annoyed me. The introduction section looks very familiar. It looks as though it's a required section of Murach books about web development. Having already read a few Murach books it really felt repetitive.
---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.
More info at Amazon.com