The JavaScript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks (Paperback)

by Cameron Adams (Author), James Edwards (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Using a cookbook approach, The JavaScript Anthology will show you how to apply JavaScript to solve over 101 common Web Development challenges. You'll discover how-to:

Optimize your code so that it runs faster

Create Ajax applications with the XmlHttpRequest object

Validate web forms to improve usability

Take control of your web pages with the DOM

Ensure that your JavaScript code is accessible

Create slick drop-down menu systems

Included in this book is extensive coverage of DHTML and Ajax, including how-to create and customize advanced effects such as draggable elements, dynamically sorting data in a Web Browser, advanced menu systems, retrieving data from a Web Server using XMLHttpRequest and more.

The JavaScript Anthology also includes extensive coverage of object oriented coding, efficient script design, accessibility, and cross-browser issues. Best of all, you'll get download access to all the code used in the book, so you can put the scripts to use instantly.

From the Publisher

"Take control with the ultimate JavaScript toolkit"

The JavaScript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks provides you with tried and tested real-world solutions to over 100 real-world scripting problems.

Among the 101 Tips, Tricks & Hacks you'll learn how-to:

• Search and replace text using regular expressions.
• Navigate the DOM and create, delete, and move elements on the page.
• Validate email addresses on your web forms.
• Print inline error messages when validating forms.
• Minimize the problems associated with popup windows.
• Make a slideshow of images.
• Ensure your code works on different browsers.
• Make a style sheet switcher.
• Build an accessible drop-down menu system.
• Construct drag 'n' drop interfaces using AJAX.
• Use JavaScript and Flash together.
• Make your JavaScript accessible: an in-depth look at minimizing the accessibility problems associated with using JavaScript.
• Use the XMLHttpRequest object to build AJAX applications.
• Optimize your JavaScript code so that it runs faster.
• And much more!

Who Should Read This Book?
If you're using JavaScript on your projects right now, and you want to do things faster and better, this book is for you. The JavaScript Anthology will save you the frustration of hunting down code on the Web only to find that it isn't customizable, and doesn't represent best practice or work across different browsers.

The JavaScript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks contains thoroughly tested, cross-browser code that you can easily modify to suit your own needs.

The book is written in the usual SitePoint style: it's clear and fun to read, with plenty of example code that you can apply immediately to your own web sites. Plus, it's super-easy to navigate the book to find exactly what you want thanks to its cookbook approach and professionally-produced index. It's the perfect reference book.

There's no need to re-type any of the code in the book. As always, customers receive instant download access to all the files used in the book, so you can apply them immediately to your own projects.

About the Author
Cameron has been adding to the Internet for over seven years and now runs his own design and development business: www.themaninblue.com. He likes to combine the aesthetic with the technological on his Weblog, which contains equal parts of JavaScript, design and CSS.

James programmed and maintains the UDM (Ultimate Dropdown Menu) system, one of the best dynamic HTML menu systems ("the world's first fully-featured and accessible website menu, and provides useable content to all browsers - including screenreaders, search-engines and text-only browsers").

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint; 1 edition (March 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0975240269
• ISBN-13: 978-0975240267
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #398,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #79 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming > JavaScript

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for some; not for others, April 2, 2006

By	Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is for advanced beginners and middling experienced developers who not only want a solid repository of the latest JavaScript but who also demand to know why these scripts are superior to what they can find in older sources.

Finding what you want is easy because the book has a consistent Problem -> Solution -> Discussion format that facilitates homing in on what you need at the moment. The discussion is where the true learning value is concentrated for those who want to go beyond dealing with their current production challenge.

I don't recommend this book if your focus involves making form-based applications or you make applications and web sites that use or display data tables. The form scripting in the book is very elementary. Surprisingly, the book contains *no* data table display or table manipulation scripting section, although it handles basic column sorting in one chapter.

Quibble: in a book otherwise packed with scripting best practices, Chapter 12 "Using JavaScript with CSS" trips up when it focuses so much attention on how to change style property values. The best practice is to change an object's style class (className) rather than embed specific property values in scripted code. On agile coding teams, it is *very* important to keep scripted behavior and the presentational layer separate.

Otherwise, this is a very solid reference and I'm glad I bought it. The chapter on scripting while coping with accessibility concerns was unique and of superior value.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you need to know about JavaScript, March 7, 2006

By	Frank Stepanski (PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You would think that by the title of this book, you would only use maybe a chapter or two to learn something in particular; or that this book is a just a copy and past DHTML book, but you would be so wrong. Even a beginner in JavaScript would be able to follow the smart and easy to follow examples in this book. The author shows the real ways to debug and figure out your syntax error right at the beginning.

After the basics of the first chapter, it slowly covers each topic (Numbers, Strings, Arrays, DOM, Forms, Cookies, etc.) slowly and with such care that it is impossible to get lost or not understand what the author is saying.

Each chapter is covered in 2 ways: A regular progression of understanding each topic and intermingling "how-to" sections (solutions) to get the readers attention. It is also a great way for readers who already know JavaScript fairly well to find a particular topic they are looking for.

I hate 800+ page books (i.e. Bible books) that can take you so long to find a particular topic or just ramble on and never really teach you anything. This book gives just enough detail with over-explaing, but don't think the book is too brief! I can easily breeze through this book and know exactly how to find the answer in minutes and understand what the author is saying.

I've been using JavaScript for a couple years now as well as teaching part-time web design and I've found many chapters very useful already, specifically: Chapter 5 (Navigating the DOM), Chapter 6 (Forms and validation), Chapter 10 (Working with Images), Chapter 13 (Basic Dynamic HTML), and Chapter 15 (DHTML Menus and Navigation). I could use this book for an entire course (15 weeks) and have more than enough material.

I've never seen a book that covers how to create a complete professional navigation system (Chapter 15) before. Most people just copy an paste code from sites like (DynamicDrive.com) for fancy DHTML effects, but I always wanted to understand how it was done. All the other JavaScript books I have purchased either never focused on it or was too old to cover the latest browser standards (IE 6, Firefox 1.x, Opera 8). This book has it all.

If you really want to understand JavaScript, get this book. It's worth every penny...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Javascript 4 U, February 15, 2007

By	Mr. Ja Fairhurst (Stockport, Cheshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent next-step up from an introduction to Javascript and looks at its use in real world situations. You will need to be reasonably fluent in the language to get the best out of it.

The book presents a topic as a question and then presents code to action that query as a solution, then goes through that code in a discussion section. This is where I have a relatively minor criticism of this book; the necessities of discussing the code do not always mesh well with the question and answer format of the layout.

The authors have gone to great effort to ensure that the book is as up-to-date as possible, though this is a rapidly moving target of course, and detail how to ensure that the code will run on as many platforms as possible, rarely giving up and saying 'forget it..', though this proved necessary in a number of the more esoteric options and older browsers.

A highly recommended read if you are looking for a quick solution, or a detailed understanding of what's going on.