JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the Web. Using JavaScript, you can create dynamic, interactive web pages that include image rollovers, pop-up windows, auto-scrolling frames, intelligent forms, and sophisticated Dynamic HTML effects. Even better, you don't have to be a programming ace to learn enough JavaScript to incorporate these elements into your web pages.

Designing with JavaScript shows you how to create the effects you want, without forcing you to wade through pages of dry programmer-speak about variables, operators, and functions. Each chapter demonstrates common JavaScript techniques and explains how to customize them for your own use. Along the way, it introduces basic JavaScript concepts, teaching the language in the context of real-world examples. By the time you finish this book, you'll have a solid foundation of JavaScript knowledge that you can apply to your own web pages.

With Designing with JavaScript, you will learn to:
 

• Use JavaScript to produce visual effects, such as image rollovers and rotating billboards
• Launch new browser windows, control frames, and validate form data
• Customize your site by using JavaScript to detect browsers, platforms, and plug-ins
• Use cookies to keep track of visitors, so you can welcome new users while offering customized pages to returning users
• Create a tabbed folder interface, drop-down menus, and a scrolling headline ticker, using the basics of Dynamic HTML

The first edition of Designing with JavaScript taught tens of thousands of web designers how to enliven their pages with JavaScript. This new edition has been updated to cover the latest JavaScript techniques supported by current web browsers. If you are ready to start incorporating JavaScript into your designs, this is the book for you.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Diving into JavaScript
     Adding descriptive links
     Night and day

2. Doing Windows
     Window basics
     Launching new windows
     Remote control

3. Controlling Frames
     The toolbar design
     Rotating pages
     QuickTime VR on a budget

4. Forms and Validation
     Getting to know that form
     Madlibs
     Stop that form!
     Is that really your email?
     Validate this!

5. Getting in Line with Arrays
     The array concept
     Being unpredictable
     Doing the date right
     Jumpin' jive

6. Too Many Browsers? Not Really
     What browser is that knocking at my door?
     Different browsers, different needs
     Style differences
     Checking for plug-ins
     Beyond the browser

7. Dynamic Images
     Image basics
     Image rollovers
     Multiple rollovers
     An image billboard

8. Customizing a Site with Cookies
     What's a cookie?
     Basic cookie operations
     A welcome for new visitors
     Forms that remember
     Customized pages

9. Dynamic HTML
     What is DHTML?
     The Document Object Model
     Dynamic Cascading Style Sheets
     Getting acquainted with layers
     Browser detection

10. Interactive DHTML Techniques
     Drop-down menus
     Sliding tabs
     Scrolling layers with clipping

11. Advanced Applications
     Object-oriented scripting
     The quiz: testing your readers
     Relational menus
     A cross-browser style object
     Moving on

A. Common JavaScript Objects

B. Event Handlers

C. Style Properties

D. JavaScript Syntax

Index