JavaScript + CSS + DOM Magic

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 320 pages
• Published by: New Riders Press; Pap/Cdr edition May 26, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0735711321
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0735711327
• Book Dimensions: 10.1 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

Book Description
JavaScript + CSS + DOM Magic has directly applicable projects with step-by-step instructions showing you how to master a feature and adapt it according to their own requirements and creativity. The wealth of graphics will make this book easy to read and visually appealing. This book makes JavaScript, CSS and DOM easy to understand by providing directly applicable models to readers' web sites. The book opens with a primer, giving context to the technologies, and then jumps into over 25 step-by-step, directly applicable projects. You will learn the most desired web functionalities, including: frames, mouse-overs, windows, forms, CGI, style sheets, dynamic positioning, and SSI. Reviewers have called this book an unprecedented practical and comprehensive DHTML guide. The CD contains complete working scripts, all images from the book's examples, bonus graphics, trial version of leading text editors (BBEdit Lite, Homesite).

Publisher Description
Web designers: Learn how to code. Dynamic web development technologies are more than the hobby horses of programmers; your knowledge of DHTML and its components--JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and the Document Object Model (DOM)--can make the difference in getting your next job. Makiko Itoh has written an eminently easy-to-learn-from entry into this world: you follow the steps, you play wth the code, you learn it by doing it. Not through 600 pages of tiny-type, but in the popular New Riders Magic-series design: landscape-layout for easy access while you work; visually forgiving, without wasting space. It's what a designer's guide to web coding ought to be. Non-patronizing (the book assumes you know your way around basic HTML and such), and intelligently helpful.

Each project explains why it's relevant to learn this stuff; then you dive in and do it. Fourteen lessons, each of which will make you a better web designer/developer for the learning. No one's asking you to give up being a designer you'll be that much better of a designer/developer for mastering what's in this book. Let us know how it works for you. Thanks. Steve Weiss, executive editor, steve.weiss@newriders.com.

"Any web developer or designer who wants to begin to seriously push the boundaries should pick up this clearly written and forward-thinking book." -- Nick Finck, Digital Web Magazine

"This well-written, clean, and concise book has great illustrations for ways of learning. I highly recommend it to people wishing to learn JavaScript." -- Eddie Traversa, dhtml nirvana

Reader Reviews
Although there are some gems among the projects in this book for any Web professional, the ones who will surely get the most from this book are those who were trained in the old Photoshop "slice and dice" school. Adept in turning a page into an assembly of graphics-laden table cells, they are a bit threatened by all this CSS furor and wonder why the experts say tables are so bad. If you are one of those people, this book is definitely for you. The author seems to be a former practitioner of Photoshop Phascism herself (one of the book's 14 projects has 71 graphics!) so she knows where you're coming from. She also knows where you have to get to create modern, clean, easily-maintained code. Most of the projects are interesting in themselves and with copious illustrations, easy steps, and thoughtful side notes, you should have no trouble following along. I also really liked the way the code in the accompanying CD was presented. Each directory had an index file with a separate link to each important step. Note: There was often a disconnect between the label in this index and the label used in the book but this did not present an obstacle. There was a bit of a lapse in testing some of the files before publication. The finished files for projects 3 and 9 did not open in IE6/Windows. The problem was infinite looping caused by the script meant to deal with an infirmity in decrepit old Netscape 4...another reason why this browser should be left behind. There was another odd lapse for a book that is very free of errors: No, there is no CURSOR property value of ARROW. One further warning to more advanced Web workers: the reference to DOM in the title may give you the impression that the scripting is the new W3C DOM "node-speak." It is not. Neither is it missed here, because script is not the focus of this fine book. The focus is on good HTML structure and artful styling. If that is your focus too, then this book is for you. Comment | | (Report this)