Ebook: Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional

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 and add dynamic enhancements to web pages and program Ajax-style applications.

Experienced web developer Christian Heilmann begins gently by giving you an overview of JavaScriptits 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.

JavaScript has been around for many years, so what makes this book different? Well, a lot of the competitors out there are large tomes; this book assumes a different approach, showing that you can give the reader all they need to know to hit the ground running, without making them trawl through hundreds of pages of syntax.

The book also gives the most up-to-date picture of the topic—JavaScript support in the most modern web browsers, and adding unobtrusive JavaScript enhancements to web sites. This book promotes the most modern programming techniques and practices.

Finally, the book provides an introduction to Ajax-style programming, which is an essential topic for modern web developers to understand. JavaScript is core to Ajax, so an understanding of it is essential when learning how to program Ajax functionality. This book therefore provides a great stepping stone for readers wishing to take this path.