4 Free HTML Books

1. Dive into HTML5

Dive Into HTML5 elaborates on a hand-picked selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine standards. This book is about HTML5, not previous versions of HTML, and not any version of XHTML.

Chapters cover:

• Introduction - explains that HTML5 is a collection of individual features such as canvas, video, local storage, and geolocation, it is easy to 'upgrade' to HTML5, and that it is well supported by popular web browsers
• History of HTML5 - includes an account of why HTML is of fascination to the author
• Detecting HTML5 Features - looks at detection techniques, Modernizr (an HTML5 detection library), canvas, canvas text, video, video formats, local storage, web workers, offline web applications, geolocation, input types, placeholder text, form autofocus, microdata, and HTML5 history API
• What Does It All Mean? - takes an HTML page that has absolutely nothing wrong with it, and improves it
• Let's Call It a Draw(ing Surface) - focuses on the canvas element
• Video in a Flash - HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a web page, using a <video> element
• You Are Here (And So Is Everybody Else) - looks at gelocation, the art of figuring out where you are in the world and (optionally) sharing that information with people you trust
• Persistent local storage - HTML5 storage, a specification named Web Storage. It is a way for web pages to store named key/value pairs locally, within the client web browser
• Taking it Offline - talks about offline web applications, the cache manifest, the offline application cache, and builds the Halma game (introducted in the canvas chapter) offline
• A Form of Madness - looks at web forms and the new input types used in HTML5
• "Distributed", "Extensibility," And Other Fancy Words - focuses on microdata, annotates the DOM with scoped name/value pairs from custom vocabularies
• Manipulating History for Fun & Profit - the HTML5 history API
• Appendix: The All-In-One Almost-Alphabetical Guide to Detecting Everything
• Appendix: HTML5 Peeks, Pokes, and Pointers

This online work is released under the CC-BY-3.0 license. There is also a printed version to purchase titled "HTML5: Up & Running" which is not released under a freely distributable license.

2. What is HTML5?

What is HTML5? is a concise introduction into the differences between legacy HTML standards and the latest standard, HTML5.

This short book takes a look at HTML5 and offers a simple proposition with a lot of complex consequences: HTML5 is both something entirely new, and yet nothing more than HTML was ever intended to be; and that once the reader really understands HTML5, he or she changes the way they code and even think about the web and their own web applications.

The contents of this bool:

• A return to first principles
• HTML5: Still connecting things
• HTML5 connections are the new rich media
• JavaScript isn't the focus of HTML5 .... right?
• Container-based web pages: A step (sort of) in the right direction
• The canvas element is a programmable div
• Mobile: Killer application, ho-hum client
• ... and a partridge and a pear tree

3. DOM Enlightenment

DOM Enlightenment is an exhaustive book written about Document Object Model (DOM) scripting without the use of a library/framework.

Chapters cover:

• Node Overview - covers node object types, sub-node objects inerit from the Node object, properties and methods for working nodes, identifying the type and name of a node, getting a nodes value, creating element and text nodes using JavaScript methods, creating and adding element and text nodes to the DOM using JavaScript strings, extracting parts of the DOM tree as JavaScript strings, and more
• Document Nodes - including HTMLDocument properties and methods, document child nodes, and detecting DOM specifications/features using document.implementation.hasFeature()
• Element Nodes - Elements in an HTML document all have a unique nature and as such they all have a unique JavaScript constructor that instantiates the element as a node object in a DOM tree
• Element Node Selecting - leverages querySelector() and getElementById() to select an element node from the HTML document
• Element Node Geometry & Scrolling Geometry
• Element Node Inline Styles
• Text Nodes - shows the reader how to create and inktext text nodes, manipulate text modes, remove markup, split a text node
• DocumentFragment Nodes - the creation and use of a DocumentFragment node provides a light weight document DOM that is external to the live DOM tree
• CSS Style Sheets & CSS rules - examining CSSStyleRule, inserting and deleting CSS rules in a style sheet, creating a new inline CSS style sheet and more
• JavaScript in the DOM - inserting and executing JavaScript
• DOM Events - looks at the event flow, adding and removing event listeners, stopping the event flow, and custom events
• Creating dom.js - a wishful jQuery inspired DOM Library for modern browsers

The DOM Enlightenment HTML version is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 unported license.

4. HTML5 Quick Learning Guide

HTML5 Quick Learning Guide is a brief and concise book that helps the reader learn to migrate from HTML/XHTML to HTML5.

The book examines the main structural elements most often used in HTML5.

HTML5 Quick Learning Guide is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.