Book Review: HTML5 Games Development by Example

HTML5 Games Development by Example: Beginner’s Guide by Makzan is as title suggest is intended for beginners. Unfortunately I'm not sure if it is true. Content is really good and I liked it, but there are many, many errors in code in listings, so I think that I had problem with almost every example. Don't get me wrong, this was mostly simple errors, and source code that I downloaded from PacktPub website was working but bad taste still exists. The worst one was first, I search for my own typo and finally find that variables has two names. It looks like in book is a mix of code from before and after refactoring. Bugs was easy and all looks similar, they was just annoying.

Tips for other readers:

• Download source code
• Keep in mind that code in book has bugs
• Keep internet connection on (some images and WebFonts to download)

Links to book:

Book: http://www.packtpub.com/html5-games-development-using-css-javascript-beginners-guide/book

Table of contents: http://www.packtpub.com/toc/html5-games-development-example-beginner%E2%80%99s-guide-table-contents

Sample chapter: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/1260OT-Chapter-5-Building-a-Canvas-Games-Masterclass.pdf?utm_source=packtpub&utm_medium=free&utm_campaign=pdf

More about book:

First: I like this book! It is practical, build around simple games, has little boxes with definitions of used functions. Great! Only this bugs in source code, but they are simple, easy to fix.
Book is really fun to read, while reading I build some simple games that are easy to extend to even more awesome games. I was amazed how this kind of games can be easy to build! 
Games was created in HTM5 and CSS3. Most of games are created using Canvas HTML5 tag, that was great! But I must admit that for me most amazing was game with CSS3 Cards, I just don't know why :) In this chapter I used for the first time WebFonts, and it was super easy! Until then I just wasn't time and opportunity to use them, and now it would be obvious to use them. +1 for author :) Book has much more those tiny little examples of things that I learned and are not strictly for games.

Chapter Chapter 8: Building a Multiplayer Draw-and-Guess Game with WebSockets wasn't so interesting for me, besides I created chats and used Node.js, library used in this chapter is now not working in Chrome. If this is new to someone try Socket.io or maybe wait for new version of library that will work. 

Rating:

I rate it 8/10, I was thinking about 7, but this would be not fair. 

Book was good, has some refactoring bugs, but content is good enough to make good really good in my opinion! There was no weaker chapters and in all of them are really good. I can recommend this book, so if you want to read book about HTML5 games, buy it :)