This Learning Kit covers more than HTML tags and attributes. Although these things are the basis of the HTML5 specification, when people talk about HTML5 they often include many other programming interfaces that are not strictly part of the HTML5 specification, like geolocation or the History API. This Learning Kit covers the basics of HTML5 and how it has changed from previous versions of HTML. It also introduces you to some of the technologies that are lumped in with HTML5, including:

• Drawing with the canvas element

• Adding streaming media with the video and audio elements

• Editing pages online and checking spelling

• Using drag-and-drop functions on web applications

• Building more user-friendly forms

• Creating semantic divisions with new elements, such as article, section, and nav

This book covers several other specifications beyond HTML5, including:

• Web Open Font Format (WOFF) web fonts

• Microformats and Microdata

• WebSockets

• Web Workers

• Files API

• Web Storage

• Offline Web Applications API

• History API

• Geolocation

Web Pages Are for More Than Computers

HTML used to be used primarily in web browsers on computers, but now, with the advent of smartphones and tablet computers, more people are accessing web pages on mobile devices.

Every hour of this Learning Kit provides examples of how the lesson’s contents apply both to web browsers and mobile devices and shows you techniques for getting your applications to look better on mobile devices.

With this Learning Kit, you will learn how to create applications that work on the most popular mobile smartphones and tablets out there: Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices). Screenshots from both Android and iOS devices appear throughout as well as tips and warnings about how the different devices perform.

Organization of This Learning Kit

This Learning Kit is divided into 24 lessons, each of which are designed to take about an hour to complete, grouped together into three sections:

• Part I, “Building Web Pages and Applications with the Open Web Standard,” teaches you the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and teaches you how to build a basic web application for mobile and non-mobile devices. After reading this section, you will know how to build a basic website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Part II, “Learning the HTML5 Essentials,” covers some of the more important new features of HTML5. You will learn more about new HTML5 elements to help you build better applications.

• Part III, “HTML5 for Mobile and Web Applications,” describes some of the more useful APIs and tools for mobile application development and goes into detail about how to create mobile applications.

Conventions Used

Code samples are written in mono font within the text. Some code examples that are too long to display as one line in the book use the symbol to indicate that these lines should be all on one line, like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles-320.css" media="only screen and (max-width:320px)">

You can also use the Try It Yourself sections to help you practice what you’ve learned in the hour.

Q&A, Quiz, and Exercises

Every hour ends with a short question-and-answer section to help with follow-up questions that occur as a result of reading the hour.

You can also take an interactive quiz on the content of each hours as well as do some suggested exercises to help you get more out of what you learned and apply this knowledge to your own applications.

Where to Go to Learn More

Appendix B includes more websites and books you can access to learn more about HTML5 and mobile web applications. This book also has a companion website at www.html5in24hours.com where you can go to see the examples, view and download the source code for each hour, view and report errata about the book, and continue to learn and ask questions about HTML5 mobile applications.

Dedication

To Mark and Jaryth, you helped me find time I didn’t know I had. I love you.

About the Author

Jennifer Kyrnin has been teaching HTML, XML, and web design online since 1997. She has built and maintained websites of all sizes from small, single-page brochure sites to large, million-page databased sites for international audiences. She lives with her husband, son, and numerous animals on a small farm in Washington state.

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