I've made a boardgame couple of years ago and since html5 is pretty much the web game plattform of the future, I've decided to make it into a browsergame. Im fammilar with html and know how to use loops and arrays etc. but Im very n00b at game dev. I've tried to make some simple games with java last year, read some basics and hacked some code together, but I encountered too many problems and gave up. Hopefully Ill be able to do it with html5 and js this time. There is some much stuff on html5 coding that I dont know where to start, best would be a tutorial that goes step by step trough the process. But I've only found tutorials for action games, none for turnbased multiplayer games. Would be great if someone could direct me to one. Then there are many tools and engines and I dont know which I should choose or if I sould code it without.
What I need is multiplayer, graphics will be 2D, drag & drop, scrolling and zooming. Im gratefull for any tips you have.

I currently dont need any animations, Ill add that later on if needed, lots of work animating. If it gets popular, case I can port it from paper to js, Ill make it 3D anyway. It dosnt even need the canvas but it would be bad if I made it without and wanted to add animations later. Ill start with autoresizing the canvas to the browser and fullscreen. Then make a grid to place jpgs in and add scrolling and zooming. After that Ill start building the gameloop. The Board (map) is variable in hight an size, cards are always added at another card, creating a labyrinth, thats why I need scrolling and zooming. The game is played with a master controlling the placement of the map cards monsters etc. and the other players try to survive in it. I already had lots of fun playing it with my friends but I failed finding a publisher for it, so Ive decided to make it a free online game. My programming skills are hacking stuff together I find to understand how it works. I've found some tut with jquery but I'd rather use a good and easy game dev library. I've found this: http://webinsightlab...5-game-engines/ but I have no Idea which fits my needs best. Currently Im searching everything I need as tutorial and I'll hack all the stuff from the tuts together, but Im still missing multiplayer tut and a boardgame sc I can learn from. Also since I like open source and my game will be anyway I prefer open source engins/libraries. But if they are to hard to use I'll have to switch to a commercial one.

Thanks Ill take a look at it. I would love to code for real but I've already thrown the towel with c++ and java. My frustration tolerance is a bit low, I really hope I'll work out with js now.

All 4 links redirekt to http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2012/07/13/JavaScript-Toddler-Game-Part-1-Hosting-a-cocos2D-app-in-Nodejs.aspx you should fix that ^^

I want to use text files for easy balancing and customization. As example a creature would have a text file where all the parts are written in the imgs used hitpoints etc.would that make the game load very slow if I implemented file I/O like that for every object in the game? That way it would be very flexible and that is what I want or is there better way?

Well one config file is a bit different than >50 text files.