JavaScript Workshop

JavaScript’s increasing popularity throughout the web makes it more important than ever to make sure our client side code is implemented with a nice mix of stability, speed, and reusability. One of the best ways for accomplishing this is to use a simple library and syntax to use as a foundation for every project.

Prototype was the first JavaScript library to get mainstream support among web developers. It is used as a foundation for other JavaScript libraries such as script.aculo.us, included in the installation of Ruby on Rails and web applications like WordPress. Provides helper functions for Forms, DOM, OOP, Ajax and extends existing JS objects. It is called a framework on the website because it is so robust that it practically recreates the JavaScript language to a certain extent.

To get an idea of the robustness of this library, take a look at this cheatsheet (.pdf) by Jonathan Snooks highlighting its interface methods and properties.

Like any language, ActionScript evolves over time. ActionScript 3.0 is simply the latest version of the Flash programming language that lets you control graphics, animation, sound, and interactivity. However, ActionScript 3.0 represents a significant change (some may say revolutionary) from the previous versions because in many ways it is conceptually and architecturally different.

Key differences from ActionScript 2.0 include:

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The technique of splitting up a information into multiple pages is known as pagination. For web pages it normally means taking a resultset from a database query and only showing a specific number of records per page. There are many variations of how to do this no matter what technology (PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion) you use.

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Raw XML is rarely suitable for direct presentation, and frequently must be organized, or transformed, to suit the needs of a specifc output device. The most widely used option for this is XSLT. Older techniques such DTD and Schemas can be used as well, but as discussed in my first post about XML, XSLT was specifically created for this and should be used when possible.

XSLT provides an effective procedure - a tree transformation process - for manipulating XML at the level of elements and attributes. A special-purpose language, XSLT has features that simplify that task of defining transformations of XML.

Here is the xml file (.xml) that is used throughout the explanations.

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In a recent article from Visual Studio Magazine, Rod Stephens wrote an article on how to write better code for yourself as well as other people who may view it. These tips can be applied to almost any programming language (JavaScript, .NET, PHP, etc.) so it is useful for any web developer.

"A computer does exactly what the code tells it to do and doesn't care what the code looks like. At the same time, it's easy to forget that you write code for people, not computers. Ultimately, you are satisfying the requirements of a user somewhere, not just writing text that will execute in a vacuum. In a development environment of any size, the code you write will be reviewed and or maintained by other people, so you need to make sure that you are clear about your intentions."

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All modern browsers support the most common media attributes, which are supplied within the link element to target specific style sheets in a specific situation. For example, to ensure only visitors viewing the web site on a monitor, you add media = "screen" to the link element to call your default style sheet. Underneath that a second link element can be used with media = "print" added to call a print style sheet with only basic styling, such as black text on a plain white background, and all graphics removed.

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The more advanced JavaScript applications get, the greater the need for structuring the code well. One way to do this is by using OOP, object-oriented programming. JavaScript itself is not an object-oriented language, but rather an object-based language. There is a support for OOP, though it's somewhat limited.

There is no distinctive keyword for classes in JavaScript. Instead, each class is defined as a function. The difference between a regular function and this one is the way this function is later called: with the new keyword.

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XML (Extensible Markup Language) is based on the same parent technology as HTML or XHTML. XML looks a lot like HTML, complete with tags, attributes and values. But rather that serving as a lagnguage just for creating web pages, XML is a language for creating other languages. You use XML to design your own custom markup language and then you use that language to format your own documents. Your custom markup language, officially called an XML application will contain tags that actually describe the data that they contain.

If a tag indentifies data, that data becomes available for other tasks. A software program can be designed to extract just the information that it needs, perhaps join it with data from another source, and finally output the resulting combination in another form for another purpose. Instead of being lost on an HTML-based web page, labeled information can be reused as often as neccessary.

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