The Essential Guide to HTML5: Using Games to Learn HTML5 and JavaScript, Third Edition

Gain a deep, practical knowledge of the basic tools used for webpages: hypertext markup language (HTML5), cascading style sheets (CSS), and JavaScript. This updated version includes new and improved games and exercises, and will serve total beginners as well as people with some programming language experience, but not familiar with the combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

You'll begin at an introductory level with the focus on technical features as well as programming techniques. Each chapter features a familiar game such as Rock-Paper-Scissors, Craps, Memory, and Blackjack or generic examples such as working with Mazes. Other projects include constructing and saving a maze; a basic word guessing game; ballistic games (Cannonball and Slingshot); a quiz requiring items to be put in order; and an animation demonstration featuring a ball, photo or video clip bouncing within a rectangle.

The Appendix contains examples of advanced techniques such as Scalar Vector Graphics programs displaying the HTML5 Logo and a cartoon figure, each of which can be changed dynamically, and mathematical techniques for calculating if a move crosses a line and re-adjusting an arrangement of circles and arrows. The exposition on each example in the chapters and the Appendix includes screen shots and tables revealing the structure of the program and statement by statement explanation of code.

The book also contains suggestions for using the concepts and techniques to build your own programs. If you follow through with your own ideas, you will develop solid programming skills for building websites and for learning other programming languages, including the next version of HTML and current and future JavaScript frameworks, libraries and tools.

What You Will Learn

• Understand HTML 5 concepts with the help of easy-to-grasp, appealing examples
• Use HTML5 to explore new avenues for web application and game development
• Review important new elements of HTML 5
• Build, test, and upload simple games to a web site

Who This Book Is For

Both absolute beginners and users with some knowledge of HTML who want to learn the new HTML5 features

About the Author

Jeanine Meyer is Professor Emerita at Purchase College/SUNY and past Coordinator of the Mathematics/Computer Science Board of Study. Before Purchase, she taught at Pace University and before that worked as a Research Staff Member and Manager in robotics and manufacturing research at IBM Research and as a consultant for IBM’s educational grant programs. She is the single author of 5 books and co-author of 5 more on topics ranging from educational uses of multimedia, programming (three published by Apress/Springer), databases, number theory and origami. She earned a PhD in computer science at the Courant Institute at New York University, an MA in mathematics at Columbia University, and a SB (the college used the Latin form) in mathematics from the University of Chicago. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Association for Women in Science, Association for Computing Machinery, and was a featured reviewer for ACM Computing Reviews.

For Jeanine, programming is both a hobby and a vocation. Every day, she plays computer puzzles online (including Words with Friends, various solitaire card games, and Duolingo for Spanish, which she views as a game). She also participates in Daf Yomi, the seven-and-a-half-year study of Talmud, which certainly has puzzle-solving aspects. She tries The New York Times crossword puzzle many days, but does better at the mini-puzzle, ken ken, and Two Not Touch in which she sometimes competes with her children. She enjoys cooking, baking, eating, gardening, travel, and a moderate amount of walking. She misses her mother, who inspired many family members to take up piano, and her father, who gave Jeanine a love of puzzles. She is an active volunteer for progressive causes and candidates.