Chapter 1, The Task at Hand, will teach you the basic components of a JavaScript application by building a template that can be used to start writing new applications. Then we will create a tasklist application where we will learn how to manipulate the DOM and how to use HTML5 Web Storage to save the state of the application.

Chapter 2, Let's Get Stylish, will show how to use the new CSS3 features to add professional-looking styles to your web applications including rounded corners, shadows, and gradients. We will also learn how to use CSS sprites to make loading images more efficient.

Chapter 3, The Devil is in the Details, will teach you about the new HTML5 form input types by adding a details section to the tasklist application. We will also learn about custom data attributes and learn how to use them to bind data in the view to the model.

Chapter 4, A Blank Canvas, will show how to use the new Canvas element and API to draw directly onto a web page by creating a drawing application. We will also learn how to handle touch events from touch-screen devices.

Chapter 5, Not So Blank Canvas, will continue teaching about the canvas by showing you how to export images from a canvas and load images into a canvas using the new File API. Then we will get down to the pixel level and learn how to directly manipulate canvas image data.

Chapter 6, Piano Man, will teach you how to use the Audio element and API to play sounds in a web page. We will create a virtual piano that plays sounds when the keys are clicked.

Chapter 7, Piano Hero, will take the virtual piano from the previous chapter and turn it into a game where the player must play the correct notes of a song at the correct time to get points. In the process we will learn about using JavaScript timers and animating elements.

Chapter 8, A Change in the Weather, will show you how to get data from servers and talk to web services using Ajax. We will build a weather widget that gets the user's location using the Geolocation API and displays their local weather report with data from a web service.

Chapter 9, Web Workers Unite, will teach you how to use HTML5 web workers to perform long running processes in a separate thread to make your applications more responsive. We will create an application that draws Mandelbrot fractals onto a canvas using a web worker.

Chapter 10, Releasing an App into the Wild, will teach you how to use a JavaScript compressor to combine and compress your application's JavaScript files before releasing it to the world. We will also learn how to create applications that can be used offline by using the HTML5 Application Cache.

The great thing about HTML5 is that there is no cost to use it. You don't need any special tools or licenses to develop web applications. However, using a good code editor will help you a lot, especially as you get started. There's nothing like autosuggest to help you remember JavaScript functions, element names, and styling options. And syntax highlighting is essential for making it easier to read code.

That said, there are a few source code editors that I can suggest if you don't already have one. Notepad++ is a free editor with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS syntax highlighting and some basic autosuggest, without a lot of overhead. I used it to write all of the code in this book. On the higher end, Microsoft Visual Studio provides very good autosuggest features but with more overhead than a basic text editor. Another great option is NetBeans, an open source IDE written in Java with good web development support.

You will also need a web browser with good HTML5 support and developer tools. The latest versions of most browsers support the HTML5 features used in this book. The browser you use should depend on which has the developer tools you like most. I use Chrome because it has great developer tools built-in. Firefox with the Firebug plugin installed is also very good. For this book I use Chrome as the browser of choice. Internet Explorer 9 doesn't completely support all of the HTML5 features we will be learning and the developer tools are not as good as the others, so I would stay away from using it for development.

The one other thing you may need is a web server such as IIS or Apache. Most of the time you can open your web application right from the filesystem when in development. However, some HTML5 features will only work through a web server. I have noted the places in this book where that is the case.

This book is for the programmer who has experience in other languages and wants to start writing HTML5 web applications. You should have some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. For example, you should know how to write simple HTML documents. You should also know the basics of using CSS selectors as they are important to using jQuery. You do not need to know how to use jQuery as this book will briefly cover the basics, but it would be helpful. As long as you can understand and write simple JavaScript code, that should be sufficient to get you going. We will start off with the basics and work our way up using lots of examples.

In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.

To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:

Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:

this.drawText = function(text, point, fill)
{
    if (fill)
    {
        context.fillText(text, point.x, point.y);
    }
    else
    {
        context.strokeText(text, point.x, point.y);
    }
};

switch (action.tool)
{
    // code not shown...
    case "text":
        canvas2d.drawText(action.text, action.points[0],
            action.fill);
        break;
}

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