Learning VBScript

By: Paul Lomax
Publisher:: O'Reilly Media
Released:: July 1997
Pages:: 624

Description

This definitive guide shows web developers how to take full advantage of client-side scripting with the VBScript language. In addition to basic language features, it covers the Internet Explorer object model and discusses techniques for client-side scripting, like adding ActiveX controls to a web page or validating data before sending it to the server. Includes CD-ROM with over 170 code samples.

Full Description

With the advent of client-side scripting, it is possible to create programs that run on a user's browser in response to particular user actions, like passing the mouse over a hyperlink or clicking a standard HTML command button. By taking advantage of client-side scripts, web pages can be made more interactive, and programs that ran as (usually CGI) applications on the server before client-side scripting can now execute on the browser, in the process improving the performance of a web site's web pages. In Learning VBScript, Paul Lomax shows how to take full advantage of client-side scripting using Microsoft's own scripting language, Visual Basic Scripting Edition, or VBScript. Learning VBScript consists of three distinct sections that quickly teach the reader how take advantage of client-side scripting to enhance a web site's pages:

A fast-paced introduction to VBScript that covers the basic features of the language and their syntax. Although these tutorial chapters are written primarily for web content providers, they also explore the difference between VBScript and Visual Basic for Applications, the programming language used both in Visual Basic and in the individual components of Microsoft Office, making them of interest to the millions of VBA programmers who are fairly new to the Web and to developing web pages.
An introduction to the Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) object model. By accessing the events, properties, and methods exposed by the browser's object model, VBScript is transformed from a fairly powerless programming language into a powerful development tool that can be used to control the browser, allowing the creation of complex interactive web pages.
A series of chapters, each of which examines a set of techniques that use client-side scripting to enhance the interactivity and attractiveness of a web site.

In focusing on techniques for creating professional, scripted web pages, Learning VBScript includes chapters on the following:

Creating documents "on the fly" from a script running on the browser

Fully describing hyperlinks when the user's mouse passes over them

Performing validation on data entered by the user before it is submitted to the server

Incorporating ActiveX controls in a web page

>Using VBScript's error handling feature to anticipate and handle user errors

Handling different browsers, particularly MSIE, Netscape Navigator, and the older browsers that don't support scripting

The CD-ROM accompanying Learning VBScript includes over 170 code samples, and allows you to retrieve examples by category; you can, for instance, retrieve hyperlinks to all the web pages that include ActiveX controls. In addition, the CD-ROM includes a complete shopping cart application that can be easily customized for your own needs. Whether you're a content provider who wants to add client-side scripts to web pages or a Visual Basic programmer who wants to begin creating web applications, Learning VBScript is the definitive guide that takes you through the rudiments of the language and covers the techniques needed to develop professional web pages.

Product Details

Title:

Learning VBScript

By:

Paul Lomax

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print Release:

July 1997

Pages:

624

Print ISBN:

978-1-56592-247-1

| ISBN 10:

1-56592-247-6

Customer Reviews

About the Author

Paul Lomax

Paul Lomax, author of O'Reilly's VB & VBA in a Nutshell and a coauthor of VBScript in a Nutshell, is an experienced VB programmer with a passion for sharing his knowledge--and his collection of programming tips and techniques gathered from real-world experience.

View Paul Lomax's full profile page.

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal featured on the cover of Learning VBScript is an eared seal. There are 18 living species of seal, grouped into 13 genera. Of these, 14 species, in 6 genera, are eared seals, family Otariidae. Eared seals are widely distributed throughout the world, especially in the southern hemisphere. The diet of this marine mammal consists mainly of fish. Some seals can dive as deep as 600 feet in search of food.

Aside from the existence of external ears, eared seals differ from earless seals in that they can bring their rear flippers forward under their bodies. This makes them more mobile on land than earless seals. In the water, both eared and earless seals move with a rowing motions of the front flippers, not using their rear flippers at all.

Eared seals fall into one of two categories--fur seals or sea lions. Fur seals grow a thick undercoat of fur, used as insulation. In one species of fur seal, over 50,000 hairs were counted in one square centimeter of skin. This thick undercoat of fur has made the fur seal very appealing to hunters.

Of the five species of sea lion, the California sea lion is the best known. Because they are relatively small, and the most graceful on land of all the seals, California sea lions are the seals most likely to be used in circus acts or kept in zoos. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker 5.0 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The CD design was created by Hanna Dyer. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 5.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.

Whenever possible, our books use RepKover™, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

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