JavaScript Bible [Paperback]

Aimed at the HTML designer with or without previous programming experience, the JavaScript Bible, 4th Edition brings a popular text up to date with a full tour of using JavaScript with all of today's Web browsers. Smart, very approachable and filled with many useful tips, this book can put JavaScript development into the reach of just about anyone.

After presenting a solid tour of basic programming in JavaScript, the book centres in on the real issues of developing JavaScript applications for real browsers. This means truly comprehensive coverage of the document object model (DOM), HTML, window and frame objects, forms and style sheets that are available today. In about 1,000 pages (and almost 30 chapters), you learn what's available in today's JavaScript standard with a reference listing every object, API and property, plus tips on how to use each feature. All this material makes this text an extremely worthwhile desktop reference for everyday JavaScript development. Particularly useful; support for every feature is clearly documented across the full range of today's browsers from Netscape Navigator 2,3,4 and 6 to Internet Explorer 3 through version 5.5.

Later chapters move toward the JavaScript language itself, with material on strings, maths functions and dates. The author discusses techniques for adapting JavaScript to particular browsers as well as providing cross-browser support where appropriate. Short exercises end each chapter and the book presents sample solutions in an appendix. Additional CD-ROM chapters move beyond the whopping 1,200 pages of printed material.

In all, the author's patient, clear writing style and real-world advice for creating great-looking Web pages with JavaScript make this title a winner. Readers of previous editions of the JavaScript Bible will appreciate the updated focus on current browsers. For anyone who wants to learn JavaScript for the first time, this edition is arguably an unbeatable choice. --Richard Dragan

Greatly enhanced and updated from the third edition, this is the title any JavaScripter cannot afford to be without! JavaScript Bible, 4th Edition covers the new powerful functionality JavaScript will gain with the release of new revs of Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator. This book features essential new JS information, additional ready–to–use JavaScript applications, and scores of additional JavaScripts and Web page routines. As with the last edition, this book will bring non–technical professionals, including casual programmers and scripters, painlessly up to speed on all aspects of mastering JavaScript, including programming fundamentals, JavaScript language elements, and how to use them effectively, and how to easily and efficiently add powerful new functionality to HTML documents and Java applets.

About the Author Danny Goodman is the author of numerous critically acclaimed and best–selling books, including The Complete HyperCard Handbook, Danny Goodman's AppleScript Handbook, and Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference. He is a renowned authority and expert teacher of computer scripting languages and is widely known for his "JavaScript Apostle" articles at Netscape's ViewSource online developer newsletter. His writing style and pedagogy continue to earn praise from readers and teachers around the world. To help keep his finger on the pulse of real–world programming challenges, Goodman frequently lends his touch as consulting programmer and designer to leading–edge World Wide Web and intranet sites from his home base in the San Francisco area.

PREFACE

For nearly 20 years, I have written the books I wished had already been written to help me learn or use a new technology. Whenever possible, I like to get in at the very beginning of a new authoring or programming environment, feel the growing pains, and share with readers the solutions to my struggles. This fourth edition of the JavaScript(tm) Bible represents knowledge and experience accumulated over five years of daily work in JavaScript and a constant monitoring of newsgroups for questions, problems, and challenges facing scripters at all levels. My goal is to help you avoid the same frustration and head scratching I and others have experienced through multiple generations of scriptable browsers.

While previous editions of this book focused on the then predominant Netscape Navigator browser, the swing of the browser market share pendulum currently favors Microsoft lnternet Explorer. At the same time, Netscape has accomplished the admirable task of reinvesting its own browser in light of rapidly advancing industry standards. As a result of both of these trends, this massively revised and expanded fourth edition treats both brands of browsers as equals as far as scripters are concerned.

Organization and Features of This Edition

Because of the greatly expanded range of vocabularies that scripts may use in the latest browser versions, the biggest change to the structure of the book is in the reference portion. In this edition, you find a greater distinction between the document object model and core JavaScript language reference sections. This new division should help those readers who are primarily interested in only the JavaScript language (for use in other applications) find what they need more quickly. Here are some details about the book's structure.

Part 1

Part 1 of the book begins with a chapter that shows how JavaScript compares with Java and discusses its role within the rest of the World Wide Web. The Web browser and scripting world have undergone significant changes since JavaScript first arrived on the scene. That's why Chapter 2 is devoted to addressing challenges facing scripters who must develop applications for both single- and cross-platform browser audiences amid rapidly changing standards efforts. Chapter 3 provides the first foray into JavaScript, where you get to write your first practical script.

Part 11

All of Part 11 is handed over to a tutorial for newcomers to JavaScript. Nine lessons provide you with a gradual path through browser internals, basic programming skills, and genuine JavaScript scripting. With only a couple of clearly labelled items, the lessons cover scripting topics that apply to all scriptable browsers. Exercises follow at the end of each lesson to help reinforce what you just learned and challenge you to use your new knowledge (you'll find answers to the exercises in Appendix C). The goal of the tutorial is to equip you with sufficient experience to start scripting simple pages right away while making it easier for you to understand the in-depth discussions and examples in the rest of the book. By the end of the final lesson, you'll know how to script multiple frame environments and even create the mouse-rollover image swapping effect that is popular in a lot of Web pages these days.

Part Ill

Part Ill, the largest section of the book, provides in-depth coverage of the document object models as implemented in browsers from the earliest days to today. In all reference chapters, a compatibility chart indicates the browser version that supports each object and object feature. One chapter in particular, Chapter 15, contains reference material that is shared by most of the remaining chapters of Part Ill. To help you refer back to Chapter 15 from other chapters, a dark tab along the outside edge of the page shows you at a glance where the chapter is located. Additional navigation aids include guide words at the bottoms of most pages to indicate which object and object feature is covered on the page.

Part IV

Reference information for the core JavaScript language fills Part IV. As with reference chapters of Part Ill, the JavaScript chapters display browser compatibility charts for every JavaScript language term. Guide words at the bottoms of pages help you find a particular term quickly.

Part V

In Part V, 1 get down to the business of deploying JavaScript. Here are the practical aspects of JavaScript, such as Chapter 43's coverage of client-side form data validation and Chapter 44's coverage of blending Java applets and plug-ins into pages. Debugging scripts is the focus of Chapter 45, with tips on understanding error messages, building your own debugging tools, and using Netscape's debugger. Chapter 46 goes into great detail about security issues for JavaScript-enabled applications. Dynamic HTML in a cross-browser environment is the subject of Chapter 47, while Chapter 48 introduces you to Microsoft's behaviors mechanism for Windows.

The remaining nine chapters consist of full-fledged applications of JavaScript. These applications are designed not necessarily as plug-and-play modules you can put into your pages right away. Instead, their goal is to demonstrate many of the concepts described earlier in the book by way of real-world examples. New for this edition are some examples based on XML data islands in Internet Explorer for Windows.

You can find all of the Part V chapters on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.

Part VI

Finally, several appendixes at the end of the book provide helpful reference information. These resources include a JavaScript and Browser Objects Quick Reference in Appendix A, a list of JavaScript reserved words in Appendix B, answers to Part ll's tutorial exercises in Appendix C, and Internet resources in Appendix D. In Appendix E, you also find information on using the CD-ROM that comes with this book.