Where is a good place to learn HTML 5 specification

Question

I learned HTML in 1997. I haven't revisited it in all those years, focusing my efforts on server side languages that have been in use at the companies paying my salary (Cold Fusion, classic ASP, ASP.NET).

Now that HTML 5 is here, I've decided to rethink the paradigm and learn the standard way to code HTML and CSS.

Currently the site I manage is built to work in quirks mode. It makes extensive use of nested tables and has no doctype declaration. I've noticed that simply adding an html 5 doctype to the pages causes the page to not render correctly.

Can someone suggest a site or book or other material which will help me eliminate my reliance on tables and make the use of CSS make sense? I'm not looking to become a master overnight, but managing a site with thousands of pages means I better know what I'm doing before I dive into any redesign.

Mike

More important after reading about it is knowing if it is available on your target platform: http://caniuse.com/ — jmucchiello, Aug 02 '13 at 18:11

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

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Personally, I've found Dive Into HTML5 to be the best resource on this, of course, after the W3 specification.

Remember that HTML5 is still a work in progress, it's not a standard as of yet and it won't be for a long time so everything you learn about it now is subject to change. In reality, though, most modern browsers are supporting most of it's features already it so it's better to start now.

And about your tables vs. CSS dilemma, I'd sugest reading on this discussion about the subject.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

Community

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answered Aug 02 '13 at 18:13

federico-t

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Mark Pilgrim has not written anything in that for years so I'm not sure how up-to-date it can be. For sure, much is not in there. – Rob Aug 02 '13 at 18:27
@Rob That's true, it's not exactly up-to-date. But for someone who's just learning, it probably gives the best and most thorough insight to HTML5 and not that "technical". But that's just my opinion. – federico-t Aug 02 '13 at 18:32

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 02 '13 at 18:20

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MDN's resource is what I found most useful.
The introductions are well written. Docs are comprehensive and clearly marks new features introduced by HTML5 and those deprecated.

answered Aug 02 '13 at 18:20

octref

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By far one of the best references and instructional sites around. It also includes instructions for new people but caters to the professional. – Rob Aug 02 '13 at 18:25

J.P. · Answer 3 · 2013-08-02T18:31:58.430

http://www.html5doctor.com, http://www.html5demos.com and http://www.html5rocks.com offer HTML5 demos and great insights into using HTML5.
http://www.html5please.com and http://www.caniuse.com offer insight into the availability of an HTML5 feature in browsers and suggests fallbacks if possible.
https://developer.mozilla.org - Mozilla Developer Network has some extremely valuable insights into the specification and usage of it.
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec, the official spec. It's actually understable! :-)

Also, for a book I'd suggest "The Modern Web" by Peter Gasston. It came out a couple of months ago and contains a lot of the latest specs (flexible boxes, for one). I also like the general ideas of the book (how the web should be used, e.g. seperating HTML/CSS/JS) and I found the writing style to be quite pleasant.

score -2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 02 '13 at 18:08

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W3 Schools is a great resource for HTML and other web languages.

http://www.w3schools.com

answered Aug 02 '13 at 18:08

Matt Healey

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http://www.w3fools.com/ – bas Aug 02 '13 at 18:36
@bas Ignore the w3fools nit-picking. Walk into any professional development environment and see how many have w3schoools open in a tab for reference. While there are errors and oversights, it's just fine for most purposes, though it's hard to beat MDN. – Rob Aug 02 '13 at 18:40

Where is a good place to learn HTML 5 specification

4 Answers4