Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 512 pages
- Published by: Apress
- Edition: 1st Edition July 14, 2006
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1590596803
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590596807
-
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.9 x 1 inches
- Weighs: 1.7 pounds
Book Description
JavaScript is one of the most important technologies on the web. It provides the means to add dynamic functionality to your web pages and serves as the backbone of Ajax-style web development.
Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax is an essential guide for modern JavaScript programming; it's practical but comprehensive. It covers everything you need to know to get up to speed with JavaScript development to add dynamic enhancements to web pages and program Ajax-style applications.
Experienced web developer Christian Heilmann begins gently by giving you an overview of JavaScript&emdash;its syntax, good coding practices, and the principles of DOM scripting. Then he builds up your JavaScript toolkit, covering dynamically manipulating markup, changing page styling on the fly using the CSS DOM, validating forms, dealing with images, and much more. Then he takes you to advanced territory, with a complete case study illustrating how many new JavaScript techniques can work together, plus a great introduction to Ajax development.
About The Author
Christian Heilmann grew up in Germany and, after a year working with people with disabilities for the red cross, he spent a year as a radio producer. From 1997 he worked for several agencies in Munich as a web developer. In 2000 he moved to the States to work for Etoys and, after the .com crash, he moved to the UK where he currently works as a lead developer for Agilisys. He publishes an almost daily blog at http://wait-till-i.com and runs an article repository at http://icant.co.uk. He is a member of the Web Standards Project's DOM Scripting Task Force.
Reader Reviews
§ § This book is for advanced beginners and professional developers. Simon Willison in his forward to the book says "There has never been a more exciting time to learn JavaScript." I agree completely and would add "re-learning" JavaScript as well for those of us no longer beginners. Several good books published the past year or so (see my other reviews for the best ones) show the clean and sharp turn JavaScript implementation has taken. This book stands out in many ways. I think its particular strengths reflect Christian Heilmann's active participation in Web forums focused on key Web development technology issues. For instance, this book has the deepest and most extensive treatment of scripting best practices related to Cascading Styles Sheets I have seen in any recent scripting book. This is a reflection of the author's ongoing and strong contributions in CSS-Discuss, the deservedly popular discussion list founded by Eric Meyer. In fact, the whole book is well-integrated on several levels. Heilmann always follows his points on the DOM, best practices, unobtrusive script, progressive enhancement, object detection, accessibility, browser bugs, etc, with excellent links to further information for the serious student. I was also very impressed with the quality of the downloadable code and how well it was organized. When the author directs you to a certain file, the file is there and with the proper name. For some reason lots of code books fail in this. This one does not. Thank you! The book's Web site continues the excellent integration. It has the code download and lots of subsidiary links. There is one convenience for the beginners: Most script books force you to know the official name of a special symbol in order to look it up. This book has the JavaScript special characters at the front of the index. The language in the book is always clear and I found almost no jarring typos or errors. On p. 67 it is stated that IE support to getElementById() began with version 5.5. The support has been there since IE5 in Windows. On p. 108 the author correctly says that setAttribute() takes two parameters -- then promptly gives two examples with one parameter and illegal syntax! Those examples would not work even in decrepit IE. Thankfully, the author only slipped in the text. His working code is just fine. The author avoided extensive treatment of those "cool" effects like animation and drag/drop that tend to give client-side scripting a bad name. He stuck to the things that mean the most to those of us who make Web sites and browser-based applications to earn a living. The book is full of ways to make our code lighter, more reusable and easier to maintain. There is real value here. § §
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