JavaScript Workshop

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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I am teaching a 2nd online class called ASP E-Commerce Database Basics at LVS Online. This 6-week class will teach you how to interact with a database by displaying, retrieving and updating data. It is a continuation from where I left off in my first class teaching ASP basics. For this class I am gearing the topics towards showing students how to create a simple online store so visitors can view and add products to a shopping cart.

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Chris Heilmann created a nice DOM Cheatsheet (.pdf) to help all us would-be JavaScript developers.

Nowadays there are many elaborate ways to create navigation to access pages on your website. Back in the early days of JavaScript, "Jump Menus" were used a lot to create simple navigation to various web pages. These have been replaced by more elaborate JavaScript menu systems that use hundreds of lines of code. This technique can still come in handy in certain situations and is good practice for anybody wanting to learn.

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Jonathan Snook is a freelance web developer living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His very popular blog cover topics such as CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Open Source, etc. He is also a web columnist for Digital Web Magazine, and has co-authored The Art and Science of CSS and Pro DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs and Libraries. Jonathan was nice enough to give me some of his time to answer questions about JavaScript and libraries.

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