Chapter 1. The Task at Hand
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."
– Helen Keller
In this first chapter we will learn the basics of creating an HTML5 application. We will create an application template to be used as a starting point for building new applications quickly and with minimal effort. Then, we'll use that template to create a simple tasklist application. Along the way we will discover how to interact with the user and manipulate the application's user interface. We will also learn about our first new HTML5 feature, the Web Storage API.
In this chapter we will learn:
- The three basic components of an HTML5 application, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Some jQuery basics for those of you unfamiliar with the JavaScript library
- How to initialize an application and handle user interactions
- How to manipulate the DOM to add, remove, change, and move elements
- How to create reusable HTML templates
- How to use the HTML5 Web Storage API to store and retrieve an application's state
