HTML5 is taking over the world. Oh no!

.NET is dead! Java is dead!

Everything is dead and HTML5 is the only technology left standing!

Wait, none of the above is true at all. It turns out that HTML5 is a wonderful tool in our toolbox, one that makes our other tools even better. In fact, learning HTML5 is one of the best things a .NET developer can do today. .NET on the server and HTML5 in a new browser on the client are a killer combination.

Jim and Ian have written about HTML5 in a voice that speaks directly to the interests and concerns of the .NET developer. The samples are clear and useful but also coded from the perspective of an ASP.NET programmer who wants to get things done. This is hugely helpful for existing ASP.NET and .NET coders who want to get up to speed on HTML5.

HTML5 is a collection of new tags and bits of markup, but the term “HTML5” is overloaded. It also encapsulates CSS3 and new JavaScript APIs, like GeoLocation and LocalStorage. But HTML5 is more than these new tools—it is more than a specification; it’s a new way to think about writing web applications; it’s an assumption that your client’s browser has capabilities and processing power that we couldn’t dream up three years ago.

A few years ago, if you wanted a chart in a browser you’d either use Flash or dynamically generate an image on the server side. Today, you can send the browser all the data a chart needs via JSON and then let the user not only see a chart generated with HTML5 Canvas, but also interact with or even change the data on the client. A few years ago, your server was the only computer with the wherewithal to sort, query, and manipulate interesting cubes of data. Today, you’ve got a tiny database and a powerful JIT’ed virtual machine inside your client’s web browser.

Fortunately for us all, you can write HTML5 today with ASP.NET; and with the release of ASP.NET 4.5, we see additional support for HTML5. The latest Visual Studio also adds improvements in JavaScript and CSS3 editing. All of HTML5 and its wondrous bits and pieces are ready for you in Web Forms, Web Pages, and MVC. Your ASP.NET applications can generate HTML5 that still works in older browsers thanks to the Modernizr feature detection library. You can use HTML5 and JavaScript on the client to call ASP.NET Web APIs on the server. HTML5 is a technology that makes the .NET developer’s life more interesting!

There are many books that talk about HTML5 as if it were an island, disconnected from any server technology. This is not the case with HTML5 for .NET Developers by Jim and Ian. If you’re a longtime ASP.NET developer looking to bone up on new techniques in web development, or if you’re just getting started with ASP.NET and you want to make sure you’re attacking new problems in the most modern and progressive way, this is the book for you.