JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook, Second Edition

By Danny Goodman
August 2007
Pages: 604
Series: Cookbooks
ISBN 10: 0-596-51408-5 | ISBN 13: 9780596514082
(4) (Average of 1 Customer Reviews)

Description

In today's Web 2.0 world, JavaScript and Dynamic HTML are at the center of the hot new approach to designing highly interactive pages on the client side. With this environment in mind, the new edition of this book offers bite-sized solutions to very specific scripting problems that web developers commonly face. Each recipe includes a focused piece of code that you can insert right into your application.

Why is JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook so popular? After reading thousands of forum threads over the years, author and scripting pioneer Danny Goodman has compiled a list of problems that frequently vex scripters of various experience levels. For every problem he addresses, Goodman not only offers code, but a discussion of how and why the solution works. Recipes range from simple tasks, such as manipulating strings and validating dates in JavaScript, to entire libraries that demonstrate complex tasks, such as cross-browser positioning of HTML elements, sorting tables, and implementing Ajax features on the client.

Ideal for novices as well as experienced scripters, this book contains more than 150 recipes for:

Working with interactive forms and style sheets
Presenting user-friendly page navigation
Creating dynamic content via Document Object Model scripting
Producing visual effects for stationary content
Positioning HTML elements
Working with XML data in the browser

Recipes in this Cookbook are compatible with the latest W3C standards and browsers, including Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari, and Opera 9. Several new recipes provide client-side Ajax solutions, and many recipes from the previous edition have been revised to help you build extensible user interfaces for Web 2.0 applications. If you want to write your own scripts and understand how they work, rather than rely on a commercial web development framework, the JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook is a must.

Featured customer reviews

Get Cooking With JS/DHTML, June 10 2008

Rating:

Submitted by timmyc [Respond | View]

Like most web developers, I typically will reach for one of the many JS libraries when it comes time to add client-side enhancements to my
web applications. This is usually the obvious choice for the sake of saving time on projects, and keeping costs down... but quite often, many libraries are simply overkill for a simple little js/dhtml enhancement.

As such, that is what lead me to this book. I was hoping the cookbook format would give me some fresh ideas on doing some simple js/dhtml work and it most definitively delivered.

Perhaps the most valuable parts of this book for me were the aspects of working on the DOM. Additionally, I always enjoy reading different
techniques for dealing with client-side form validation.

To me the coverage on loading dynamic data/ajax was good, but I still think that when entering into that realm of JS, it is usually time to
deploy one of the libraries I mentioned earlier.

All in all this has become a valuable resource that I often refer to during my daily work. I would recommend this book for those looking for the cookbook approach... those looking for a pure JS book/primer, check the title by the same author.

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Media reviews
"I confess to being in the early stages of sophisticated web page development. Having made this confession, I have to say that Danny Goodman has done a stellar job revising and updating this book. He has written a cookbook that can appeal to web developers at all levels, even mine. His approaches to each of the 150 or so recipes for successful debugging/fixing are both rich and straightforward."
-- John R. Clark, TCM Reviews

"JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook, 2nd edition offers easily-digested solutions to specific scripting problems in Java, making it a 'must' for any library already strong in Java programming references...An outstanding reference addition."
-- James Cox, The California Bookwatch

"I like the cookbook style because it provides an on going resource for future coding projects. The book is useful right away and will be in the future when I am ready to try the more ad-vanced projects."
-- Bob Grant, Manatee Computer News, June 2009, Volume 23, Issue 6

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