The bestselling JavaScript guide, updated with current features and best practices Beginning JavaScript 5th Edition shows you how to work effectively with JavaScript frameworks, functions, and modern browsers, and teaches more effective coding practices using HTML5. This new edition has been extensively updated to reflect the way JavaScript is most commonly used today, introducing you to the latest tools and techniques available to JavaScript developers. Coverage includes modern coding practices using HTML5 markup, the JSON data format, DOM APIs, the jQuery framework, and more. Exercises with solutions provide plenty of opportunity to practice, and the companion website offers downloadable code for all examples given in the book. Learn JavaScript using the most up to date coding style Understand JSON, functions, events, and feature detection Utilize the new HTML5 elements and the related API Explore new features including geolocation, local storage, and more JavaScript has shaped the Web from a passive medium into one that is rich, dynamic, and interactive. No matter the technology on the server side, it's JavaScript that makes it come alive in the browser. To learn JavaScript the way it's used today, Beginning JavaScript, 5th Edition is your concise guide.

Table of Contents:
Introduction xix Chapter 1: Introduction to Javascript and the Web 1 Introduction to JavaScript 1 What is JavaScript? 2 JavaScript and the Web 3 What Can JavaScript Do for Me? 4 Tools Needed to Create JavaScript Web Applications 4 Development Tools 4 Web Browsers 5 Where Do My Scripts Go? 7 Linking to an External JavaScript File 7 Advantages of Using an External File 8 Your First Simple JavaScript Program 9 Writing More JavaScript 10 A Brief Look at Browsers and Compatibility Problems 15 Summary 16 Chapter 2: Data Types and Variables 17 Types of Data in JavaScript 18 Numerical Data 18 Text Data 19 Boolean Data 20 Variables—Storing Data in Memory 20 Creating Variables and Giving Them Values 22 Assigning Variables with the Value of Other Variables 24 Using Data—Calculations and Basic String Manipulation 26 Numerical Calculations 26 Increment and Decrement Operators 29 Operator Precedence 30 Basic String Operations 35 Mixing Numbers and Strings 37 Data Type Conversion 38 Dealing with Strings That Won’t Convert 41 Arrays 43 A Multi‐Dimensional Array 47 Summary 52 Chapter 3: Decisions and Loops 55 Decision Making—The if and switch Statements 56 Comparison Operators 56 Precedence 57 Assignment versus Comparison 57 Assigning the Results of Comparisons 58 The if Statement 58 Logical Operators 62 AND 63 OR 64 NOT 64 Multiple Conditions Inside an if Statement 65 else and else if 69 Comparing Strings 70 The switch Statement 71 Executing the Same Code for Different Cases 75 Looping—The for and while Statements 76 The for Loop 76 The for…in Loop 80 The while Loop 80 The do…while loop 82 The break and continue Statements 83 Summary 84 Chapter 4: Functions and Scope 87 Creating Your Own Functions 88 Scope and Lifetime 92 Global Scope 92 Functional Scope 93 Identifier Lookup 93 Functions as Values 94 Summary 97 Chapter 5: Javascript—An Object‐Based Language 99 Object‐Based Programming 100 What are Objects? 100 Objects in JavaScript 100 Using JavaScript Objects 101 Creating an Object 102 Using an Object’s Properties 103 Calling an Object’s Methods 104 Primitives and Objects 104 JavaScript’s Native Object Types 105 String Objects 105 The length Property 106 Finding a String Inside Another String—The indexOf() and lastIndexOf() Methods 106 Copying Part of a String—The substr() and substring() Methods 109 Converting Case—The toLowerCase() and toUpperCase() Methods 110 Selecting a Single Character from a String—The charAt() and charCodeAt() Methods 111 Converting Character Codes to a String—The fromCharCode() Method 115 Removing Leading and Trailing Whitespace—The trim() Method 115 Array Objects 116 Finding Out How Many Elements are in an Array—The length Property 116 Adding Elements—The push() Method 117 Joining Arrays—The concat() Method 117 Copying Part of an Array—The slice() Method 118 Converting an Array into a Single String—The join() Method 119 Putting Your Array in Order—The sort() Method 119 Putting Your Array into Reverse Order—The reverse() Method 121 Finding Array Elements—The indexOf() and lastIndexOf() Methods 122 Iterating through an Array without Loops 123 The Math Object 126 The abs() Method 127 Finding the Largest and Smallest Numbers—The min() and max() Methods 127 Rounding Numbers 127 The random() Method 131 The pow() Method 132 Number Objects 134 The toFixed() Method 134 Date Objects 135 Creating a Date Object 135 Getting Date Values 136 Setting Date Values 139 Calculations and Dates 140 Getting Time Values 140 Setting Time Values 143 Creating Your Own Custom Objects 144 Creating New Types of Objects (Reference Types) 148 Defining a Reference Type 149 Creating and Using Reference Type Instances 150 Summary 151 Chapter 6: String Manipulation 153 Additional String Methods 154 The split() Method 154 The replace() Method 156 The search() Method 157 The match() Method 157 Regular Expressions 158 Simple Regular Expressions 159 Regular Expressions: Special Characters 162 Text, Numbers, and Punctuation 162 Repetition Characters 165 Position Characters 166 Covering All Eventualities 170 Grouping Regular Expressions 171 Reusing Groups of Characters 173 The String Object 175 The split() Method 175 The replace() Method 177 The search() Method 179 The match() Method 180 Using the RegExp Object’s Constructor 183 Telephone Number Validation 185 Validating a Postal Code 187 Validating an E‐mail Address 189 Validating a Domain Name 189 Validating a Person’s Address 190 Validating the Complete Address 190 Summary 191 Chapter 7: Date, Time, and Timers 193 World Time 194 Setting and Getting a Date Object’s UTC Date and Time 197 Timers in a Web Page 200 One‐Shot Timer 200 Setting a Timer that Fires at Regular Intervals 202 Summary 203 Chapter 8: Programming the Browser 205 Introduction to the Browser’s Objects 206 The window Object 207 The history Object 208 The location Object 209 The navigator Object 210 The geolocation Object 210 The screen Object 213 The document Object 213 Using the document Object 214 The images Collection 216 The links Collection 218 Determining the User’s Browser 218 Feature Detection 218 Browser Sniffing 221 Summary 225 Chapter 9: DOM Scripting 229 The Web Standards 231 HTML 232 ECMAScript 233 The Document Object Model 234 The DOM Standard 234 Level 0 234 Level 1 234 Level 2 235 Level 3 235 Level 4 235 Browser Compliance with the Standards 235 Differences between the DOM and the BOM 236 Representing the HTML Document as a Tree Structure 236 What is a Tree Structure? 236 An Example HTML Page 237 The Core DOM Objects 238 Base DOM Objects 238 High‐Level DOM Objects 239 DOM Objects and Their Properties and Methods 240 The Document Object and its Methods 240 The Element Object 246 The Node Object 250 Manipulating the DOM 259 Accessing Elements 259 Changing Appearances 259 Using the style Property 259 Changing the class Attribute 262 Positioning and Moving Content 263 Example: Animated Advertisement 264 Are We There Yet? 264 Performing the Animation 265 Summary 268 Chapter 10: Events 271 Types of Events 272 Connecting Code to Events 273 Handling Events via HTML Attributes 273 Handling Events via Object Properties 280 The Standard Event Model 283 Connecting Code to Events—The Standard Way 283 Using Event Data 289 Event Handling in Old Versions of Internet Explorer 298 Accessing the event Object 298 Using Event Data 300 Writing Cross‐Browser Code 307 Native Drag and Drop 317 Making Content Draggable 318 Creating a Drop Target 319 Transferring Data 325 Summary 333 Chapter 11: HTML Forms: Interacting With the User 335 HTML Forms 336 Traditional Form Object Properties and Methods 338 HTML Elements in Forms 339 Common Properties and Methods 340 The name Property 340 The value Property 340 The form Property 340 The type Property 340 The focus() and blur() Methods 340 Button Elements 341 Text Elements 345 The Text Box 345 Problems with Firefox and the blur Event 350 The Password Text Box 351 The Hidden Text Box 351 The textarea Element 351 Check Boxes and Radio Buttons 355 Selection Boxes 364 Adding and Removing Options 365 Adding New Options with Standard Methods 369 Select Element Events 370 HTML5 Form Object Properties and Methods 375 New Input Types 376 New Elements 380 The Element 380 The and Elements 382 Summary 386 Chapter 12: JSON 391 XML 392 JSON 393 Simple Values 394 Objects 394 Arrays 395 Serializing Into JSON 396 Parsing JSON 396 Summary 400 Chapter 13: Data Storage 403 Baking Your First Cookie 404 A Fresh‐Baked Cookie 404 Viewing Cookies in Internet Explorer 404 Viewing Cookies in Firefox 409 Viewing Cookies in Chrome 411 The Cookie String 413 name and value 413 expires 413 path 414 domain 415 secure 416 Creating a Cookie 416 Getting a Cookie’s Value 419 Cookie Limitations 424 A User May Disable Cookies 424 Number and Information Limitation 425 Cookie Security and IE 425 Web Storage 426 Setting Data 427 Getting Data 428 Removing Data 428 Storing Data as Strings 428 Viewing Web Storage Content 431 Summary 432 Chapter 14: Ajax 435 What is Ajax? 436 What Can It Do? 436 Google Maps 436 Google Suggest 436 Browser Support 436 Using the XMLHttpRequest Object 438 Creating an XMLHttpRequest Object 438 Using the XMLHttpRequest Object 438 Asynchronous Requests 440 Creating a Simple Ajax Module 441 Planning the HttpRequest Module 441 The HttpRequest Constructor 442 Creating the send() Method 443 The Full Code 443 Validating Form Fields with Ajax 444 Requesting Information 445 The Received Data 445 Before You Begin 446 A Web Server 446 PHP 447 Things to Watch Out For 453 Security Issues 454 The Same‐Origin Policy 454 CORS 454 Usability Concerns 455 The Browser’s Back Button 455 Creating a Back/Forward‐Capable Form with an IFrame 455 The Server Response 456 Dealing with Delays 460 Degrade Gracefully When Ajax Fails 461 Summary 462 Chapter 15: HTML5 Media 463 A Primer 464 Scripting Media 467 Methods 468 Properties 471 Events 477 Summary 481 Chapter 16: jQuery 483 Getting jQuery 484 jQuery’s API 485 Selecting Elements 485 Changing Style 487 Adding and Removing CSS Classes 488 Toggling Classes 489 Checking if a Class Exists 490 Creating, Appending, and Removing Elements 490 Creating Elements 491 Appending Elements 491 Removing Elements 492 Handling Events 492 The jQuery Event Object 493 Rewriting the Tab Strip with jQuery 494 Using jQuery for Ajax 497 Understanding the jQuery Function 497 Automatically Parsing JSON Data 498 The jqXHR Object 498 Summary 504 Chapter 17: Other Javascript Libraries 505 Digging into Modernizr 506 Getting Modernizr 507 Modernizr’s API 508 Custom Tests 509 Loading Resources 510 Diving into Prototype 515 Getting Prototype 515 Testing Your Prototype Installation 516 Retrieving Elements 517 Selecting Elements with CSS Selectors 518 Performing an Operation on Elements Selected with $$() 519 Manipulating Style 519 Creating, Inserting, and Removing Elements 520 Creating an Element 520 Adding Content 520 Removing an Element 521 Using Events 521 Rewriting the Tab Strip with Prototype 522 Using Ajax Support 525 Delving into MooTools 531 Getting MooTools 531 Testing Your MooTools Installation 531 Finding Elements 533 Selecting Elements with CSS Selectors 533 Performing Operations on Elements 533 Changing Style 534 Creating, Inserting, and Removing Elements 535 Using Events 536 Rewriting the Tab Strip with MooTools 537 Ajax Support in MooTools 540 Summary 546 Chapter 18: Common Mistakes, Debugging, and Error Handling 549 D’oh! I Can’t Believe I Just Did That: Some Common Mistakes 550 Undefi ned Variables 550 Case Sensitivity 551 Incorrect Number of Closing Braces 552 Incorrect Number of Closing Parentheses 553 Using Equals (=) Rather than Equality (==) 553 Using a Method as a Property and Vice Versa 554 Missing Plus Signs during Concatenation 554 Error Handling 555 Preventing Errors 555 The try…catch Statements 556 Throwing Errors 557 Nested try…catch Statements 562 finally Clauses 562 Debugging 563 Debugging in Chrome (and Opera) 564 Setting Breakpoints 566 Scope Variables and Watches 566 Stepping through Code 567 The Console 571 Call Stack Window 573 Debugging in Internet Explorer 574 Setting Breakpoints 576 Adding Watches 576 Stepping through Code 576 The Console 577 Debugging in Firefox with Firebug 578 Setting Breakpoints 578 Watches 579 Stepping through Code 580 The Console 580 Debugging in Safari 580 Setting Breakpoints 583 Adding Watches 583 Stepping through Code 583 The Console 583 Summary 583 Appendix A: Answers to Exercises 587 Appendix B: Javascript Core Reference 653 Appendix C: W3C DOM Reference 683 Appendix D: Latin‐1 Character Set 715 Index 723