Table of Contents for

The Modern Web

Who You Are and What You Need to Know

Before I begin, I’ll explain some of the presumptions I’m making about you and tell you what you need to know to get the most out of this book. First, let’s talk about you. Whether you’re a professional, you’d like to be, or you’re just someone who enjoys playing around with the Web, you have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—not to any deep, intimate level, but enough that you don’t need me to teach you what they are or how to write them.

Perhaps you learned to build websites a while ago and need to bring your skills up to date; maybe you’re learning web development at school and want extra lessons; or perhaps you’re a working developer but don’t get the opportunity to keep up with developments in coding for the Web. Whether any of those descriptions fit, I assume you want to get involved in building websites in a modern way, which work across multiple devices and are sympathetic to the dimensions and capabilities of each device—that’s doubtless why you picked up a book with this title.

This book builds on your knowledge of web development. It’s not a beginner’s guide, but it’s not an advanced book either. Rather, this book is a snapshot of current, new, and near-future features in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and related technologies, with a bias toward those that are best for building sites in the multi-device world.

As well as that basic knowledge, you need to know your way around the developer tools in your browser, although not in any power-user kind of way. In some of the JavaScript examples, I log results into a tool’s developer console; this is a standardized method of working and is the same if you use the native tools in Chrome, Firefox, IE9+, Opera, Safari, or third-party tools like Firebug. I might, for example, use a line of code like this:

console.log('Hello World');

And the result will be shown in the console; Figure 1-1 shows how this is displayed in Firebug. As I said, I won’t use the console or developer tools much, but if you don’t know how to use them, you should really take the time to learn now.

Figure 1-1. A Hello World message logged in the console in Firebug

If you’re still reading this, either you have all the knowledge required to proceed, or you’re getting ready to try to bluff your way through. Regardless, let’s move on to talk about technology.