Guidance for HTML5 Web Development for Modern Browsers Shown in Project Silk

Project Silk provides guidance for building maintainable cross-browser web applications that are characterized by an intentional design, rich interactivity, and a responsive user interface (UI), resulting in an immersive and engaging user experience (UX). Such applications take advantage of the latest web standards, including HTML5, CSS3, and ECMAScript version 5, and modern web technologies such as jQuery and ASP.NET MVC3.

The guidance, Project Silk: Client-Side Web Development for Modern Browsers, is intended for web developers and assumes you have some hands-on experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and ASP.NET MVC. The reference application used relies heavily on a few important JavaScript and jQuery concepts that you need to understand.

An intentional design indicates that deliberate attention was paid to the modularity of the JavaScript code, and the usability of the application was an explicit focus. Under the direction of the team's web designer, UI and UX concerns received special attention, and this guidance aims to help you be successful addressing these concerns in your own applications. Modularity is important when building highly interactive web applications because they often require a significant amount of JavaScript code. This guidance aims to help you understand how to write maintainable JavaScript code that reaps the many benefits of a modular design.

Project Silk also illustrates how you can take advantage of the fast JavaScript engines of the modern, standards-based web browsers to achieve a user experience and execution speeds that rivals desktop applications. Windows Internet Explorer 9 further enriches the user experience by taking advantage of integration with the operating system and hardware-accelerated graphics processing.

The concepts explained in the Project Silk written guidance are demonstrated via a real-world customer-facing web application called the Mileage Stats Reference Implementation (Mileage Stats). Mileage Stats allows users to track and compare their vehicles' fuel efficiency, usage, and operating costs, and to schedule vehicle maintenance reminders.