Edward Monical asked the other day on twitter in response to my blog post on path11’s blog if I had any recommendations for tools and resources for using HTML5 and managing the browser compatibility issues that might arise while using it:

Although it is by no means complete, here it goes!

Books

HTML5 and CSS3

In this book Brian P. Hogan gives a good introduction to the new elements in HTML5 and CSS3. One of the greatest plusses of this book is that apart from introducing a new technology he always gives advice on fallback mechanisms and how to handle the situations when the client browser does not support a given functionality.

Another nice aspect of this book is that he goes from the most popular (and usable) features of HTML5 to the more obscure. This way you’ll be able to apply what you read immediately.

You can find out more about this book at the pragmatic programmers.

HTML5 for Web Designers & CSS3 for Web Designers

A Book Apart has a very nice series of books related to the web. They are small and to the point and in general an easy read.

This two books (HTML5 for Web Designers & CSS3 for Web Designers) give great advice and insight into these two technologies. They show you how to use HTML5 and CSS3 today.

What I like specially about these books is how succinctly they introduce the theme and explain it without beating around the bush.

The Book of CSS3

In The Book of CSS3, Peter Gasston uses real-world examples to teach the fun­da­men­tals of the CSS3 spec­i­fi­ca­tion, high­light­ing the latest de­vel­op­ments and future fea­tures, while pay­ing close atten­tion to cur­rent browser implementations.

Each chapter exam­ines a dif­fer­ent CSS3 mod­ule and shows it’s features with in depth examples.

I found this book really helpful to understand the inner workings and tips and tricks of CSS3.

Definitely a must read if you want to dwell a little deeper into CSS3!

Sites

There are a couple of sites that will help you with your day to day development. This list is by no means complete nor in any particular order.

• The HTML5 Test
• Browser support revealed
• When can I use…
• Comparison of layout engines
• HTML5 readiness
• Doctor, helping you implement HTML5 today
• HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills
• Periodic Table of the Elements
• HTML Elements and Attributes

The tool front is not that mature as you would expect, but given this is still a relatively young technology it can only become better.

A great way to start a HTML5 project is to use a html5 boilerplate which will give you a good start (they usually cater for different browsers).

Modernizr is a fantastic javascript library that helps you overcome many of the cross browser compatibility issues.

Creating a website that works (and looks alike) on every major browser is a huge amount of work (and sometimes an impossible to achieve endeavor). You will have to take into account many details and implementation issues of all the browsers you want to support which can become a nightmare. With patience (and some trade offs) you will get there though.

I hope this list is helpful. If you have any comments, doubts, questions or ideas let’s start the conversation!