This might just be the most nerdily specific book I’ve read and enjoyed. Even if you’re not planning to build a web browser any time soon, it’s kind of fascinating to see how HTML is parsed—and how much of an achievement the HTML spec is, for specifying consistent error-handling, if nothing else.
The last few chapters are still in progress, but you can read the whole thing online or buy an ePub version.
The fascinating history of interactive fiction from adventure game to hypertext.
The split between parsers and hyperlinks reminds me of different approaches to chatbots: free text entry vs. constrained input.
A great one-page intro to microformats (h-card in particular), complete with a parser that exports JSON. Bookmark this for future reference.
Henri Sivonen gives the lowdown on the HTML5 parser that will ship with the next version of Firefox. This is a huge development ...and yet users won't even notice it (by design).