Introduction

If you've purchased this book (or are standing in the bookstore thinking about purchasing it), you've probably already made up your mind to start integrating JavaScript into your Web projects—or at least you're interested in the multifaceted applications you can build with it. That said, this book is not beginner-level "basic tutorial," but a more advanced exploration of a real-world project that will show you how to implement JavaScript in actual applications. This book begins where most other tutorials leave off—by showing you how to pull together the basic operations of a software application in order to actually build practical and viable Web site for your organization.

What Are the Goals of This Book?

Although this book is divided into two parts, it has several specific goals in mind. Those goals include:

• Presenting the fundamentals of JavaScript. From programming basics to working with forms, from learning about JavaScript security to presenting you with code debugging tips and tricks, Part I (Chapters 1–13) will lay the necessary groundwork for both the project case study and your own specific JavaScript projects.

• Teaching good coding practices and fundamental programming skills. It could be said that programming all comes down to understanding some basic concepts. That is, if you know the foundational rules, you can quickly learn and implement new skills. With this in mind, we've written the chapters of Part I to give you this "ground-level understanding" of JavaScript. We've included lots of sample code in these early chapters, so that as you learn about the general concepts, you can immediately see them practically implemented.

• Developing a "real world" JavaScript-enabled Web site. Part II of the book puts you in the role of Web designer for the fictitious Center Park School. Rather than just throwing a bunch of sample code at you and asking you to make sense of it on your own, the project is divided into chapters that deal with a specific aspect of the final Web site. The first project chapter (Chapter 14) and the last (Chapter 21) present you with a before-and-after project view that will increase your larger understanding of the issues involved while working with JavaScript in an actual application.

• Examining the entire Web development picture. There's more to Web design than just simple code. Indeed, the actual coding of a project is often the "easy" part, and developing a design plan and project template the real challenge. Working with clients can be a daunting task, especially if those customers are not technically minded. To give you a sense of what it's like to plan and develop an entire Web project, we ask you to imagine that you are the actual designer of the Center Park site, and to address the requests put forward by the school administrators.

This book has been written from a holistic, total application-solution perspective. While you'll be presented with the functional foundations of JavaScript in the chapters that compose Part I, you also get a chance in Part II to examine a JavaScript-rich Web site and to study the code that makes the site function.