But when Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows would allow for development in HTML5 and JavaScript, the world took notice, and a lot of us are scrambling to get up to speed. Okay, so some developers have been playing with HTML5 for a while now, and JavaScript has been around for years. I’ve worked in HTML4 for quite a while, and JavaScript has never really floated my boat. I’m a traditionalist. Code compiles. Scripts are what I use to run back in college before I had a real IDE.
I say that with only a little bit of sarcasm. I’ve never liked Web UI coding. Working with the infinite number of browsers and their individual peculiarities frustrated the crap out of me. The web was for signing people up for things, watching videos and browsing news and sports. You would never write a real application in this environment. Would you? What masochistic developer would want to build a core business system in something you could never truly test, and would behave differently on every computer? What sadistic system designer would expect users who have jobs to do to wait for a page to refresh every time they wanted to know if their data was valid?
When I heard about Microsoft’s intentions, my initial reaction was to think it was a joke. After hearing it a few times, and learning it really was true, my heart skipped a beat. I was worried that I was about to be left behind again technically, and in a few years, I’d be one of those back-end developers that couldn’t change with the time. I’d be branded as a ‘.NET Developer’, something akin to the 2011 version of a COBOL programmer. It didn’t take long for that fear to turn to anger. I’d just invested the last five years working my way deep into the Microsoft .NET Stack, building my skills and my reputation, and… and it just wasn’t fair! This whole process was very similar to the seven stages of grief. I went through the depression of realizing that I was again going to have to rebrand myself and rebuild my skills, and then the realization that doing it the last time really hadn’t been that bad. I started to look at the opportunities this would present – things that I had never before been able to do, that I could now do. I started to research what HTML5 really was, and what it was that made the world so sure this was the way to go.
After doing some piecemeal research on the web, I realized I needed a book. I’m a book learning. Reading a book primes my brain. Books are generally better organized than the snippets you might find on line. I wanted to start with the basics, and form a solid base with which I could talk intelligently with my coworkers and my bosses. I wanted a book that would explain it from the beginning.
Introducing HTML5 (First Edition) by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp was the book I chose to get me there, and I highly recommend it. It starts by covering the Structural Elements of HTML5, how pages are organized, the new elements and the expanded role of JavaScript in HTML5 applications. It then dives into some of the more advanced features of HTML, including Audio and Video, Canvas, Data Storage, Offline mode, Drag and Drop, Geo-Location and Messaging. I skimmed the Audio and Video and the Canvas sections since I am usually designing business apps, and haven’t had the need to build an app that draws lines since I was in college. I did, however, build a Silverlight Video player on Windows Azure for Microsoft Demo Showcase back in 2009/2010, so I expect that sooner or later, I’ll be doing something similar to that in HTML5. It’s good to know it’s there.
I was fascinated by the offline storage possibilities and the future of messaging and sockets. I can see a day coming very soon where I build an HTML5 app with messaging tied to the service bus on Windows Azure that handles Windows Workflow Processes and notifies users that some long running, multiple streamed process has completed. There’s power there. A lot of it.
I do find it a little bit funny that this is the second technical book in a row I’ve read where the authors are constantly taking shots at Microsoft and Internet Explorer. I guess I’ve been buried so deep in the mother-ship for so long, that I don’t have the same level of animosity. Of course, I have worked my career around not having to do a lot of browser work. Perhaps that has insulated me far more than I thought.
This book is short and to the point, and a great introduction to HTML5. You won’t come out a world class expert on HTML5, but you will understand the basic concepts, enough to be able to talk about it, and to begin the honest discussion of whether or not that next project you are starting should target HTML5. I’m at least willing to consider it at this point, as long as we don’t implement any features that can’t be made backwards compatible by implementing modernizr.js which is covered by Scott Guthrie here.
The biggest advantage I see to HTML5 is that in the ideal world going forward, we can build an app once, and as long as it is HTML5 compliant, it should just work on all browsers. I really like that. I want to do the work once, and move on the next project. HTML5 brings the Web UI development out of the dark ages, and makes it a real possibility for someone like me. This is a good book to get up and running inside of a week, and I’ve already recommended it to my team.
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