For the third time in my life, I have written a book. HTML5 For Web Designers is available for pre-order now from A Book Apart.
That’s right—the same lovely people who brought you A List Apart are now delivering good ol’-fashioned dead tree publications.
The quality and craftsmanship of the resultant book is, as you would expect, stratospherically high. How could it not be given the team of superheroes who put it together:
- Jason Santa Maria is the designer,
- Mandy Brown is the editor and
- Jeffrey Zeldman oversaw the whole process.
Working with them has been an honour and a pleasure. I’m certain that is their generosity that spurred me on to deliver what is, in my opinion, the best thing I have ever written.
It’s not a long book. It’s about 16 kilowords long. That’s a feature, not a bug.
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
Whether that quote is attributable to Cicero, Twain or Pascal, it speaks to a real truth in writing. Omit needless words
said William Strunk. Or, as Orwell wrote in Politics and the English Language:
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
But that doesn’t mean that HTML5 for Web Designers is a mere exercise in brevity and information density. It’s also quite fun.
Fun
isn’t a word that you often hear associated with technical subjects like markup languages but I knew that if I wanted to appeal to the right audience for this book, I had two watchwords:
- It has to be brief.
- It has to be entertaining.
That’s where the team behind A Book Apart really helped me.
I started with the first chapter and wrote it in my voice. This is usually the point at which a traditional publisher would respond with suggestions for improvements
to the writing style to make itappeal to a wider audience
…resulting in a watered-down bland shadow of the original.
Jeffrey, Mandy and Jason responded with so much enthusiasm and encouragement that I felt I could continue to just be myself when writing this book. The result is something I am truly proud of.
Given its brevity, HTML5 for Web Desigers is obviously not an exhaustive look at everything in HTML5. There is no mention of offline storage, drag’n’drop or any of the other advanced JavaScript APIs. Instead, I’ve focused on forms, rich media, and most importantly, semantics. The book is intended as a primer for web designers who are hearing a lot of conflicting and confusing things about this strange amalgamation of technologies called HTML5. I hope to bestow some measure of clarity and understanding.
The first hit is free. You can read chapter one, A Brief History of Markup, on A List Apart.
Jason describes the design process, Mandy tells of the business aspect and Jeffrey has written a very kind and flattering overview of the book. You can pre-order your copy now.
As excited and proud as I am of HTML5 for Web Designers, is it wrong that I am equally excited that the book is also an item on Gowalla?