JavaScript for Absolute Beginners

If you are new to both JavaScript and programming, this hands-on book is for you. Rather than staring blankly at gobbledygook, you'll explore JavaScript by entering and running hundreds of code samples in Firebug, a free JavaScript debugger. Then in the last two chapters, you'll leave the safety of Firebug and hand-code an uber cool JavaScript application in your preferred text editor.

Written in a friendly, engaging narrative style, this innovative JavaScript tutorial covers the following essentials:

• Core JavaScript syntax, such as value types, operators, expressions, and statements provided by ECMAScript.
• Features for manipulating XHTML, CSS, and events provided by DOM.
• Object-oriented JavaScript, including prototypal and classical inheritance, deep copy, and mixins.
• Closure, lazy loading, advance conditional loading, chaining, currying, memoization, modules, callbacks, recursion, and other powerful function techniques.
• Encoding data with JSON or XML.
• Remote scripting with JSON-P or XMLHttpRequest
• Drag-and-drop, animated scrollers, skin swappers, and other cool behaviors.
• Optimizations to ensure your scripts run snappy.
• Formatting and naming conventions to prevent you from looking like a greenhorn.
• New ECMAScript 5, DOM 3, and HTML 5 features such as Object.create(), Function.prototype.bind(), strict mode, querySelector(), querySelectorAll(), and getElementsByClassName().

As you can see, due to its fresh approach, this book is by no means watered down. Therefore, over the course of your journey, you will go from JavaScript beginner to wizard, acquiring the skills recruiters desire.

1: What is data, and how do I store and access it. 2: Doing the math - How do I manipulate my data. 3: How do I make decisions in my code. 4: How do I organize my data. 5: How do I keep related code together in a structured way. 6: How do I make my code interact with my webpage. 7: How do I add style to my web applications using CSS. 8: Making things happen - How do I work with events. 9: How do I get information from my webpage visitors. 10: How do I store data safely on a visitor’s computer. 11: How do I find, fix, and prevent errors. 12: Object-Orientated Programming: What is it, and why do I need to know it. 13: How do I make my webpages more dynamic?

Terry McNavage has been programming with JavaScript for 14 years and is the author of "JavaScript for Absolute Beginners" (Apress, December 2010). In addition, Terry is an elite runner, typically running 100 or more miles per week, and a bit of a food geek. Like Brendan Eich, JavaScript's creator, Terry is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So he's hoping the Pirates raise the Jolly Roger more often than not in 2012 rather than notch their 20th losing season in a row.