JavaScript Introduction Course

This course is for Web developers and designers looking to extend the functionality of their web pages beyond pure (X)HTML. Students should be thoroughly with the techniques of creating web pages using (X)HTML, including forms. They should be comfortable in using one or more web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome.

Attendees should have some programming understanding, preferably some experience with any language that uses C-like syntax such as C, C++, C#, PHP, Java or Perl. Attendees should in any case have an understanding of the concepts and use of literals and variables, expressions and operators, including precedence and associativity, if/else statements and looping statements using both while and for keywords. For one organisation, for those without such experience, the initial topics can be covered at a less challenging pace.

Topics covered on the 3 day JavaScript Introduction course

Introduction

• JavaScript origins and antecedents
• JavaScript and related standards
• Embedding client-side JavaScript in (X)HTML
• Script structure
• Basic output methods

Basics

• Basic syntactical structures
• Basic input methods
• Event handlers
• Errors and diagnostics
• eval

Data types, expressions, operators

• Integers, floats, strings
• Variables and assignment
• Creating expressions using operators
• Conversions

Basic control structures

• Relational expressions
• Conditional processing: if and else
• switch
• Logical operators
• Looping: while, for

Arrays

• Defining normal arrays
• Assigning and extracting values
• Iterating across arrays
• Array dimensions
• Extending and reducing arrays
• Sorting and reversing arrays

Functions basics

• Creating your own functions
• Invoking functions
• Passing and receiving arguments
• Variable scope
• return value(s)

Object basics

• Creating objects and new keyword
• Accessing values of an object
• Constructors
• Class and instance methods
• prototype property
• with

Core built-in objects

• Number, string and boolean types
• String objects and properties
• Simple string methods
• Mathemetics
• Date and time handling
• Regular expression basics
• The Prototype library

Error and exception handling

• Identifying and fixing errors
• Syntax and runtime errors
• Debugging
• Anticipating errors
• onerror
• try...catch....finally

Regular expressions

• The Regexp object
• String and Regexp methods
• Pattern matching facilities
• Replacing text

Browser and document object model

• Representing the browser
• W3C
• The DOM

Window and timer techniques

• Opening new windows
• Directing content to windows
• Accessing the status bar
• Timers and Prototype's PeriodicalExecuter class

The DOM in practice

• Level 0 and IE4 model and events
• Dynamic content, innerHTML, etc
• Level 1 and 2 techniques

Forms and JavaScript

• Form objects and properties
• Form elements, properties and methods
• Named sets

Form validation

• onSubmit and onReset event handlers
• onblur and indivual elememt validation
• Form.submit() and Form.reset()
• Generic validation

Images and sound

• Rollovers
• Pre- and post-loading
• The Image object
• Image maps
• Sounds