Scriptin’ with JavaScript and Ajax: A Designer’s Guide

430 Pages·2009·8.66 MB·English

by  Charles Wyke-Smith [Charles Wyke-Smith]

Copyright
Scriptin’ with JavaScript and Ajax: A Designer’s Guide
Charles Wyke-Smith
New Riders1249 Eighth StreetBerkeley, CA 94710510/524-
2178
Find us on the Web at www.newriders.com
To report errors, please send a note to [email protected]
New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson
Education Copyright © 2010 Charles Wyke-Smith©
Development Editor and Compositor: Beth BastProject Editor:
Nancy PetersonTechnical Editor: Christian HeilmannProducti
on Coordinator: Hilal SalaCopy Editor and Proofreader: Anne
Marie WalkerMarketing Manager: Glenn BisignaniIndexer: Jo
y Dean LeeCover Design: Aren HowellCover Production: Hila
l SalaInterior Design: Mimi Heft
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher. For information on getting
permission for reprints and excerpts, contact
[email protected].
Notice of Liability
The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis
without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in
the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit
shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to
any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or
indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the
computer software and hardware products described in it.
Trademarks
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to
distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where
those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was
aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as
requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product
names and services identified throughout this book are used in
editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies
with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such
use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey
endorsement or other affiliation with this book.
Technical Note: This book was produced using Adobe
InDesign. Code was developed in Adobe Dreamweaver.
Graphics were designed in Adobe Fireworks and Adobe
Photoshop. Screenshots were taken with SnapzProX by
Ambrosia Software.
ISBN 13: 978-0-321-57260-8
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Dedication
For Beth
Acknowledgments
I want to first thank Nancy Ruenzell, Peachpit’s publisher, for
the opportunity to write another book on the New Rider’s
imprint, and Michael Nolan, Peachpit Acquisitions Editor, for
encouraging me to complete the ...in’ trilogy.
Nancy Peterson, my Project Editor, has been a wise and
gracious advisor while keeping me focused on the time
deadline, which I have actually met. Our weekly conference
calls have been a wonderful source of guidance and
encouragement, and have greatly contributed to this book’s
direction and focus. To you, Nancy, my sincere thanks, and I
hope we will meet in person sometime soon.
Thanks go to the editorial and production team at Peachpit: to
production editor Hilal Sala for her attention to the myriad
details getting the pages ready to go to press, to Anne Marie
Walker for her copyediting and proofing, and to Joy Dean Lee
for the indexing.
Several programmers have worked with me on this book.
Michael Rosier assisted with the initial table of contents and
some early code examples. Mark Turansky has been a
valuable source of advice and ideas, and developed the
framework examples in Chapter 6. Austin Markus of Ithus in
San Francisco, who was the technical editor on my book
Codin’ for the Web, wrote the PHP and much of the jQuery for
the Author Carousel example in Chapter 7.
My sincere thanks go to Chris Heilmann, International
Development Evangelist for the Yahoo! Development
Network and JavaScript genius. He has been invaluable as the
technical editor of this book, and I am grateful to him for his
detailed and always humorous feedback on the code. He also
developed the YUI example in Chapter 7. I am glad that he is
such a night owl because I have often been able to
videoconference with him on Skype in the early hours in
London where he lives to get advice when working late here in
South Carolina. It has been a great experience working with
Chris, and I thank him for the time he has given to this project.
Special thanks goes to Scott Fegette, Technical Product
Manager for Dreamweaver at Adobe, for his ongoing support
and encouragement.
A quick shout-out goes to David Sarnoff, Sean Rose, and
Mike Harding, fellow musicians in my band Mental Note
(www.mentalnoteband.com). Guys, being able to get out and
play from time to time during the development of this book
has helped keep me sane, and I appreciate your friendship and
the time we spend making music.
Once again, a big hug and a kiss for my wife Beth, who has
expanded her role from my previous books to Development
Editor on this one, and who has advised me on every aspect of
it. She has edited the drafts of the chapters, corrected my
grammar, reedited my run-on sentences (yes, still doing that),
and had me rework my explanations until I produced
something she could understand. She has coordinated the
deliveries of the numerous rounds of chapters with the
Peachpit team, developed the diagrams from my sketches, and,
not least, laid out the entire book in its final form in Adobe
InDesign. Thanks to you, sweetie, we did it again!
To my lovely daughters, Jemma and Lucy, we once again have
had less time together while I have been writing, and now it’s
time for our vacation. I love you so much, appreciate your
patience while I have been shut in my office writing, and look
forward to enjoying the rest of the summer with you both.
Finally, I want to thank you, my readers, for buying my books
and for sharing your experiences using the techniques and
ideas in them. I’m delighted to have finally completed this
JavaScript book in response to all of you who have
encouraged me to write it.
—Charles Wyke-Smith
Charleston, South Carolina, July 12, 2009
About the Author
Charles Wyke-Smith is the author of Stylin’ with CSS: A
Designer’s Guide and Codin’ for the Web: A Designer’s Guide
to Developing Dynamic Web Sites. Charles has been involved
in print, multimedia and Web design for over twenty years. He
founded PRINTZ Electronic Design in San Francisco in the
mid-eighties, an early all-computerized design studio, and was
a pioneer in interactive media development.
He has been creating Web sites since 1994 and has provided
Web design and consulting service to companies including
Wells-Fargo, Benefitfocus, ESPN Video Games, and
University of California, San Francisco.
His work today focuses on online application development,
with an emphasis on user experience, information architecture,
and interface design.
An accomplished speaker and instructor, Charles has taught
classes in multimedia interface design and has presented at
many industry conference.
He lives with his wife, Beth, and two daughters in Charleston,
South Carolina.
Contributors
Christian Heilmann is a geek and hacker by heart. He’s been
a professional Web developer for about eleven years and
worked his way through several agencies up to Yahoo!, where
he delivered Yahoo! Maps Europe and Yahoo! Answers.
He’s written two books and contributed to three others on
JavaScript, Web development, and accessibility. He managed
teams in the U.S., India, and the U.K. to release dozens of
online articles and hundreds of blog posts in the last few years.
He’s been nominated Standards Champion of the Year 2008
by .net magazine in the UK. Currently he sports the job title
International Developer Evangelist, spending his time going
from conference to conference and university to university to
train people on systems provided by Yahoo! and other Web
companies.
Austin Markus is a Web application developer and principal