Javascript In 10 Simple Steps Or Less

This book is divided into 11 parts:

Part 1: JavaScript Basics

This part provides tasks that illustrate some fundamental JavaScript techniques and skills. If you have never used JavaScript before, this part is for you. It provides examples that illustrate the basics of creating scripts and using JavaScript.

Part 2: Outputting to the Browser

This part covers some core techniques for using JavaScript to generate dynamic output to the browser window, including outputting dynamic values such as dates.
Part 3: Images and Rollovers

Using JavaScript, you can manipulate images, producing effects such as rollover effects and random slide shows. The tasks in this part illustrate techniques for working with images from JavaScript.

Part 4: Working with Forms

Forms involve more than just submitting data to the server. This part illustrates how to create dynamic client-side forms in the browser and to build forms that work with the user without contacting the server.

Part 5: Manipulating Browser Windows

This part provides tasks that illustrate the creation and closing of windows, how to manage the attributes of those windows, and how to work with frames. All these features are key to developing sophisticated user interfaces with JavaScript.

Part 6: Manipulating Cookies

Normally cookies are created by your server and sent to the browser for storage. The browser then sends them back to the server when the user connects to that server. Now with JavaScript, you can create cook­ies and access them later without any interaction with the server.

Part 7: DHTML and Style Sheets

JavaScript is part of a threesome that forms Dynamic HTML. The other parts are the Domain Object Model and cascading style sheets. The tasks in this part show you how to work with the DOM and style sheets.

Part 8: Dynamic User Interaction

This part provides tasks that illustrate some of the most popular uses of JavaScript for dynamic user interaction—from creating pull-down menus to producing floating windows and handling drag-and-drop user interaction.

Part 9: Handling Events

JavaScript is an event-driven scripting language. This means you don’t create linear programs but instead can write your programs to respond to events. Events might be the user clicking on a button or the com­pletion of a task by the browser, such as completing loading of the current document.

Part 10: Bookmarklets

Bookmarklets are an interesting application of JavaScript that combines JavaScript with the bookmarks or favorites feature of browser. Bookmarklets are short, self-contained JavaScript scripts that perform some useful task that you can add to your favorites or bookmarks and then run at any time by selecting the relevant favorite or bookmark.

Part 11: Cross-Browser Compatibility and Issues

As JavaScript has become more advanced and its features have expanded, browser compatibility has become an issue. As would be expected, different browser vendors have different ideas about the right way to do things in their implementations of JavaScript. The result is a plethora of browsers with subtle differences in the way JavaScript works. The tasks in this part provide you with some techniques for handling these browser differences in your applications.

The appendices provide you quick references to JavaScript and cascading style sheets you can consult in developing your applications when you need reminders of the correct property, method, or style attribute name.

Finally, the complete source code for each task can be found on the companion Web site at www.wiley. com/10stepsorless. This makes it easy for you to try the code illustrated in the task or adapt the code for your own purposes.
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