AdvancED DOM Scripting: Dynamic Web Design Techniques [Paperback]

Jeffrey Sambells (Author), Aaron Gustafson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2007 | ISBN-10: 1590598563 | ISBN-13: 978-1590598566 | Edition: 1

As a web designer or developer, you know how powerful DOM scripting is for enhancing web pages and applications, adding dynamic functionality and improving the user experience. You've got a reasonable understanding of JavaScript and the DOM, but now you want to take your skills further. This book is all you need—it shows you how to add essential functionality to your web pages, such as on the fly layout and style changes, interface personalization, maps and search using APIs, visual effects using JavaScript libraries, and much more.

• Includes a quick recap of the basics, for reference purposes
• Packed with real world JavaScript solutions from beginning to end
• Written by Beginning Google Maps author Jeffrey Sambells, and includes a case study by JavaScript guru Aaron Gustafson

What you’ll learn

• A quick recap of the HTML and CSS DOM, methods, and events
• The basics of how to add dynamic effects and respond to user actions to your web sites using CSS and JavaScript
• Introduces Ajax to the mix, showing you how to use it, and when not to use it
• Best practices (such as graceful degredation) and productivity improvement via code reuse (libraries and APIs)
• Create Mashups using search, photo and mapping APIs
• Build better, more dynamic user experiences using libraries such as Prototype and Scriptaculous

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to advanced web designers and developers who already have a reasonable to good knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey Sambells is a graphic designer and self-taught web applications developer best known for his unique ability to merge the visual world of graphics with the mental realm of code. With a bachelor of technology degree in graphic communications management along with a minor in multimedia, Jeffrey was originally trained for the traditional paper-and-ink printing industry, but he soon realized the world of pixels and code was where his ideas would prosper. In late 1999, he cofounded We-Create, Inc., an Internet software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, which began many long nights of challenging and creative innovation. Currently, as director of research and development for We-Create, Jeffrey is responsible for investigating new and emerging Internet technologies and integrating them using web standards-compliant methods. In late 2005, he also became a Zend Certified Engineer. When not playing at the office, Jeffrey enjoys a variety of hobbies from photography to woodworking. When the opportunity arises, he also enjoys floating in a canoe on the lakes of Algonquin Provincial Park or going on an adventurous, map-free, drive with his wife. Jeffrey also maintains a personal website at JeffreySambells.com, where he shares thoughts, ideas, and opinions about web technologies, photography, design, and more. He lives in Ontario, Canada, eh, with his wife, Stephanie, his daughter, Addison, and their little dog, Milo.

Aaron Gustafson pushed pixels and bits as a freelancer for many top companies (Aetna, Deloitte & Touche, Delta Airlines, Guinness, IBM and Scholastic, to name a few) before taking a position at Cronin and Company, a regional advertising agency. At Cronin, Aaron got the digital department off the ground and set the standards (pun intended) for all web development within the agency. His work on websites for Bertucci's, Konica Minolta, Mystic Aquarium, TriZetto and several Connecticut state agencies garnered numerous state, national and international awards for Cronin, for both design and web standards. In early 2006, Aaron left Cronin to focus on building his own web shop (Easy! Designs, LLC) and writing more. In addition to being a member of the Web Standards Project (WaSP), Aaron sits on the advisory panel for WOW (formerly World Organization of Webmasters) and is a member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS). He serves as production editor for A List Apart, is a contributing writer for Digital Web Magazine, and contributed several chapters to the newly-updated Web Design in a Nutshell, Third Edition (O'Reilly). Aaron has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences, including COMDEX, MacWorld and SXSW, and has been called on to provide web standards training in both government and corporations. He blogs at easy-reader.net.

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: friendsofED; 1 edition (August 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598563
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598566
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1.2 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,387,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars riddled with bugs - wait for later version December 1, 2007

By T. Dalmasso

Format:Paperback

UPDATE (3-17-08)

I bought this book again because the material is definitely good. I'm really bummed Friends Of Ed let it go to press with all these errors though. I mean, come on--I'm finding errors all over the place! That is a great disservice to Sambells. But I've decided the material is worth wading through the many, many copy editing oversights. I'm crossing my fingers I don't get stuck troubleshooting typos in the code that choke my browser. That could easily waste hours of my time.
-=-=-

I was pretty excited after I dropped the $50 or so to by this book because the contents are right down my alley. Unfortunately, I could hardly make it out of Chapter 1 for all the typos and editorial oversights. Here are a few as an example:

PG 34 -- "myVarialbe" instead of "myVariable"
PG 35 -- "when you retrieving" instead of "when you are retrieving"
PG 36 -- references a function called "initAchors()" that isn't used in the example code for that example. initAnchors() appears in the next example on the next page.
PG 37 -- number of iterations in loop changes from 3 to 5 from 1st example to 2nd example for no apparent reason - this is confusing and distracts from the point being made.
PG 37 -- Figure 1-7 shows three objects in diagram instead of the 5 needed (one for each loop)

This is all in just 3 pages!

This is the part of the book I started reading first so I assume the rest of the book is going to be as poorly edited/ proofread. This surprises me as I own over 5 or 6 titles from the Friend Of Ed series and I don't recall ever seeing so much as a typo in any of them.

Overall, I think the book shows promise. But I can't tolerate errors like this in a programming book. They are difficult enough to read already without having to figure out what the message was "supposed" to be.

I'm returning this book to the store. When it reaches a later edition I may give it another go. It needs some serious "debuggin" first though.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars It is difficult to say... November 23, 2007

By Richard W. Garganta

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The author clearly knows his stuff but I find the book hard to understand. Is it the author or my level of javascript experience? Hard to say. I will say this - you probably want to know javascript very well before getting this book. For those taking learning steps in javascript like myself, this book is far from the next step from Jeremy Keith's books.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best JavaScript/DOM/AJAX Book Ever January 9, 2008

By David Betz

Format:Paperback

This is the greatest Modern JavaScript, DOM Scripting, and AJAX book I've ever seen. Having done AJAX since 1999 before the buzzword ever became popular, I can say that a book this exhaustive has never been written before now. It covers everything from the JavaScript's often misunderstood variable scope to the deep interaction with the DOM and everything in between.

This book is an intermediate to advanced book that requires that you have some understanding of our every day web technologies. If you are a web developer, then you are required to know XHTML and JavaScript anyway. This isn't just some surace level "how-to" book. This covers the deep internals of AJAX and will make you an expert.

Feel free to ignore anyone who claims this book contains spelling errors or other things that in no way change the overall structure of the book and that any thinking person can get around. No ant will ever make a sky scraper fall; it's irrelevant. This isn't an English book or a book for novices. It's a practically graduate-level JavaScript/DOM/AJAX book that requires you to be a thinking person to begin with.