Maybe you've heard the story—or probably urban legend—about the university that didn't lay any grass or pour any concrete when it first opened, leaving the campus grounds as solid dirt. Then, as students began to traverse the campus from one class to the next, campus planners mapped the common paths they took, and then landscaped and paved concrete trails based on these paths.

HTML5 shares the same moral as that story: Utility based on convention. An extraordinary update to the web's markup language, the HTML5 specification incorporates many of the conventions we've all been using in our markup and formalizes them as an official recommendation. Dale Cruse's HTML5 Multimedia Development Cookbook comes at the perfect time when many of us are transitioning to this new specification. Browser vendors, thankfully, are following suit by adopting HTML5 components at an impressive pace.

But the real secret sauce of Dale's work is the fact that this book—the one you're holding now—is a cookbook in every respect (and from a guy who doubles as a wine savant, no less). Its pages are filled with recipes for creating successful, real-world implementations of HTML5 websites. You'll find thorough, detailed chapters covering forms, video, audio, and much more. There's even a chapter that'll help you style your HTML5 using CSS3, and a chapter explaining how to ensure your HTML5 content is accessible to those using assistive technologies. Every chapter includes exceptional examples from across the web, carefully dissected.

Dale is a master chef when it comes to web standards and forward-thinking, and backwards-compatible markup. I've had the pleasure of working with him in the past on a project of mine, and it was just as clear then as it is now that he knows his stuff. Whether it's the remarkable or the commonplace, the innovative or the practical, Dale Cruse's HTML5 Multimedia Development Cookbook will have you preparing, sautéing, and serving incredible HTML5 websites in no time. Bon appétit.