Product Overview

Simply JavaScript

“Everything you need to learn JavaScript from scratch!”

This JavaScript beginner’s book will show you how to:

• Learn JavaScript’s built-in functions, methods, and properties.
• Easily integrate JavaScript into your web site.
• Use JavaScript to validate form entries and interact with your users.
• Understand how to respond to user events.
• Create animations that bring your web site to life.
• Start programming using the DOM and Ajax.

	Order the Printed Book	$39.95
	Order the Digital eBook Pack What's that?	$29.95
	Order Both	$49.90 (normally $59.95)

Overview

Packed with examples, Simply JavaScript is all you need to start programming in JavaScript the right way. Learn how easy it is to use JavaScript to solve real-world problems, build smarter forms, track user events (such as mouse clicks and key strokes), and design eye-catching animations. Then move on to more powerful techniques using the DOM and Ajax.

World-renowned authors, Kevin Yank and Cameron Adams have used their exquisite skills and in-depth knowledge of JavaScript to deliver a book that teaches JavaScript with unprecedented clarity.

Contained within the book’s 432 pages are hundreds of clear illustrations, and the unique use of the JavaScript library developed especially for the book makes Simply JavaScript the most readable, easy-to-understand beginner’s book available.

Who are the Authors?

What will you learn?

Among its many treasures, this book will show you how to:

• Learn JavaScript’s built-in functions, methods, and properties.
• Easily integrate JavaScript in your web site.
• Use JavaScript to validate form entries and interact with your users.
• Understand how to respond to user events.
• Create animations that bring your web site to life.
• Start programming using the DOM and Ajax.

Perfect for the first-time JavaScript coder, this book teaches JavaScript with unprecedented clarity, featuring loads of useful illustrations and advice on how to use JavaScript the right way in the real world.

What’s inside?

Chapter 1: The Three Layers of the Web

A big part of learning JavaScript is learning when it’s the right tool for the job, and when ordinary HTML and CSS can offer a better solution. Before we dive into learning JavaScript, we’ll take a little time to review how to build web sites with HTML and CSS, and see just how JavaScript fits into the picture.

Chapter 2: Programming with JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language. To work with it, then, you must get your head around the way computer programs work—which to some extent means learning to think like a computer. The simple concepts introduced in this chapter—statements, variables, expressions, loops, functions, and objects—are the building blocks for every JavaScript program you’ll ever write.

Chapter 3: Document Access

While certain people enjoy writing JavaScript code for its own sake, you wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley at night. As a well-adjusted web developer, you’ll probably want to use JavaScript to make changes to the contents of your web pages using the Document Object Model (DOM). Lucky for you, we wrote a whole chapter to show you how!

Chapter 4: Events

By far the most eventful portion of this book (ha ha ha … I slay me), this chapter shows you how to write JavaScript programs that will respond to the actions of your users as they interact with a web page. As you’ll see, this can be done in a number of ways, for which varying degrees of support are provided by current browsers.

Chapter 5: Animation

Okay, okay. We can talk all day about the subtle usability enhancements that JavaScript makes possible, but we know you won’t be satisfied until you can make things swoosh around the page. In this chapter, you’ll get all the swooshing you can handle.

Chapter 6: Form Enhancements

I know what you’re thinking: forms are boring. Nobody leaps out of bed in the morning, cracks their knuckles, and shouts, “Today, I’m going to fill in some forms!” Well, once you trick out your forms with the enhancements in this chapter, they just might. Oh, and just to spice up this chapter a bit more, we’ll show you how to make an element on your page draggable.

Chapter 7: Errors and Debugging

When things go wrong in other programming languages, your computer will usually throw a steady stream of error messages at you until you fix the problem. With JavaScript, however, your computer just folds its arms and gives you a look that seems to say, “You were expecting, maybe, something to happen?” No, English is not your computer’s first language. What did you expect? It was made in Taiwan. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to fix scripts that don’t behave the way they should.

Chapter 8: Ajax

You might have heard about this thing called Ajax that makes web pages look like desktop applications, and shaky business ventures look like solid investments. We put it into this book for both those reasons.

Chapter 9: Looking Forward

JavaScript doesn’t just have a future; JavaScript is the future! Okay, you might think that’s taking it a bit far, but when you read this chapter and see the many amazing things that JavaScript makes possible, you might reconsider.

Appendix A: The Core JavaScript Library

As we progress through the book, we’ll write code to solve many common problems. Rather than making you rewrite that code every time you need it, we’ve collected it all into a JavaScript library that you can reuse in your own projects to save yourself a ton of typing. This appendix will provide a summary and breakdown of all the code that’s collected in this library, with instructions on how to use it.

View the Table of Contents

Who Should Read This Book?

Whether you’ve never seen a line of JavaScript code in your life, or you’ve seen one too many lines that doesn’t do what you expect, this book will show you how to make JavaScript work for you. We assume going in that you’ve got a good handle on web design with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). You needn’t be an expert in these languages, but as we’ll see, JavaScript is just another piece in the puzzle. The better you understand basic web design techniques, the more you can enhance them with JavaScript.

No-risk Money-back Guarantee

Of course we’re so confident that you’ll treasure this book for years to come that we’re happy, as always, for you to try it risk-free for 30 days. If you purchase a copy of Simply JavaScript and you think it fails to be everything you wanted, we would like you to have your money back.

Simply contact us and we will see to it that you receive a prompt and courteous refund of the full purchase price minus shipping and handling.

What could be fairer than this?

How To Order This Book

The fastest way to get your hands on the most recent version of Simply JavaScript is by ordering it direct through us, the publisher, for $39.95.

Exclusive from sitepoint.com, for only $9.95 extra you can purchase Simply JavaScript in a downloadable PDF format to accompany your physical book purchase. Now you can read the entire book while you're waiting for your printed copy to arrive, and you can take the entire book with you on your laptop when you are away from the office!

Our top priority is to ensure that you get your shipped order as quickly as possible and in good condition.

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