Intro

Hi, welcome to the fifth edition of Upgrade Your HTML!

You’re probably here because you work with HTML, and it’s either you like HTML so much, or care about HTML quality enough, to pick up more niche books about the topic. (If you don’t particularly like HTML or don’t feel strongly about HTML output, keep reading, although the book may be less exciting to you.)

Now, I can relate to liking and caring about HTML. There’s much to like—the simple syntax, the broad use cases, the details and intricacies. There’s also a lot to HTML quality—using HTML for the right purpose (semantics), the right way (conformance), with as little code as possible (performance, minimalism, efficiency—however you like to call it).

HTML is also challenging. It comes with a huge specification (today’s PDF print version speaks of 1,463 pages), which a professional working group and a passionate community actively maintain.

If you’re already familiar with this book series, I suggest you move ahead and continue with the first chapter.

If you’re new to the series, let me give you a quick overview of what you can expect. Upgrade Your HTML focuses on minimal, quality HTML. It’s not about learning HTML from scratch, and it’s not about the latest changes or additions to HTML, either. It’s about understanding HTML better and learning how to write better HTML, by taking, discussing, and optimizing real-world examples.

Yet, you’ve probably read this in the book description—and like HTML so much, or care about HTML quality enough, to give this book a try.

Welcome again—let’s upgrade some HTML.

—Jens Oliver Meiert