DOM Scripting was my first book. It came out five years ago. Two years after that, I wrote Bulltetproof Ajax. Now I’ve written a third book.
It’s called HTML5 for Web Designers and you can pre-order it now from the greatest publishers on the web, A Book Apart. It’s not a long book, by design. It’s got just enough to get you up to speed with the new shininess in HTML5.
For a book about a markup language, there’s a surprising amount of JavaScript-related material in there. The new form enhancements are particularly interesting for the behaviour layer. A lot of common patterns that currently require scripted solutions are beginning to move down the stack into the structural layer: date pickers, sliders, and so on. We’re still going to need scripted solutions for a while yet, but it’s going to be an interesting period of transition.
We’ve been here before. Remember when you needed to use the onmouseover event just to do a simple rollover? Now we just use the :hover pseudo-class in CSS —although I have pointed out six years ago, with tongue firmly in cheek, that this crosses the streams of pristine layers of separation.
This is how technology evolves. Common patterns that require a programming solution eventually get a declarative implemenation. We’re seeing it in CSS with animation and we’re seeing it in HTML5 with form controls.
Does that make DOM Scripting obsolete? Far from it. Instead we can stop using JavaScript to reinvent the wheel, recreating patterns that thousands of others have already implemented, and instead start using the technology to solve problems specific to our own content.
My first book, DOM Scripting was published in 2005. It opens with the words:
This is an exciting time to be a web designer.
That’s even more true in 2010, thanks to HTML5. In HTML5 for Web Designers, I’m sharing my excitement.
Posted by Jeremy on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 12:55pm
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