Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS

2025 Edition: Harness the power of HTML5 and CSS to create UIs that work flawlessly on mobile phones, tablets, desktops, and everything in-between. The bestseller, now with color images.

Key Features

• Understand what responsive web design is, and learn to design effective, accessible, and future-proof front-end applications
• Explore the newest CSS features like view transitions, scroll-driven animations, P3 colors, and CSS functions
• Learn brand-new time-saving additions to the HTML language, including dialogs and modals

Book Description

Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS, Fifth Edition, is the very latest, up-to-date version of one of the bestselling books on HTML5 and CSS. It emphasizes pragmatic application, teaching the approaches needed to build websites and applications, with downloadable examples.

Written in Ben's friendly and easy-to-follow style, this title can be read as a complete guide, or used as a reference for each topic.

If you're a backend dev looking to understand the front of the web stack and its possibilities, or perhaps a frontend dev looking for a comprehensive resource on everything new in HTML and CSS to build the most efficient UIs, this is the book for you. Even if you are deferring your code writing to AI, this book gives you the requisite knowledge to understand the validity and efficiency of AI's output.

Among the many topics, we cover approaches for better accessibility, utilizing variable fonts, explainers on the latest color manipulation techniques and functions, in-depth coverage of bleeding-edge features such as scroll-driven animations, view transitions, CSS anchor positioning, CSS layers, container queries, nesting, and much more.

By the end, you'll not only have a thorough understanding of responsive web design and what's possible with the latest HTML5 and CSS, but also know how to best implement each technique.

What you will learn

• Leverage color functions to mix colors and convert between color spaces
• Use media and container queries to detect touch/mouse and color preference
• Leverage HTML semantics to author accessible markup
• Use SVGs to provide resolution-independent images and learn to efficiently display them
• Create animations as items enter and leave the viewport using just CSS
• Discover CSS custom properties and make use of new CSS functions
• Add validation and interface elements to HTML forms
• Check whether the frontend code produced by AI tools is effective for your goals

Who this book is for

Are you a full-stack or backend developer who needs to improve their front-end skills?

Perhaps you work on the frontend and need a definitive overview of all that modern HTML and CSS has to offer?

Maybe you have done a little website building, but you need a deep understanding of responsive web designs and how to achieve them?

Perhaps you are using AI tools to produce code and want to check the output?

If any of those scenarios sound familiar, this is the book for you!

All you need to take advantage of this book is a working understanding of HTML and CSS. No JavaScript knowledge is needed.

Table of Contents

1. The Essentials of Responsive Web Design
2. Writing HTML Markup
3. Media and Container Queries
4. Fluid Layout and Flexbox
5. Layout with CSS Grid
6. CSS Nesting, Layers, Selectors, and More
7. Typography on the Web
8. CSS Color
9. Stunning Aesthetics with CSS
10. Responsive Images
11. SVG
12. Transitions, Transformations, and Animations
13. Custom Properties and CSS Functions
14. Forms
15. Cutting-Edge CSS Features
16. Bonus Techniques and Parting Advice

Ben Frain has been a web designer/developer since 1996. He is currently employed as a lead product designer at Bet365. Before the web, he worked as an underrated (and modest) TV actor and technology journalist, having graduated from Salford University with a degree in media and performance. He has written four equally underrated (his opinion) screenplays and still harbors an, admittedly fading, belief he might sell one. He likes to pretend he isn't a nerd but spends an inordinate amount of time building keyboards and talking about them, text editors, and the web on his blog and YouTube channel. Outside of geekery, he enjoys managing his youngest son's football team, if standing in a freezing wet field, while a team of 11-year-olds shout at you to shut up can be called enjoyment. He is also hoping that, one day soon, his eldest teenage son will emerge from his room to spend some time with him and his wife, rather than merely to ask whether there is anything to eat or to ask for money.