JavaScript is an important feature of every major browser because it enables enhanced user interaction on both Web sites and Web applications. While exploring everything from its history to today's advanced features, this book shows you how to use this powerful language to its full potential in order to develop your own applications that solve the business problems facing Web developers today.

You'll gain a clear understanding of the components that make up a JavaScript implementation, plus you'll examine critical areas including events, regular expressions, and browser detection techniques so that you can build dynamic user interfaces. You'll also learn how to extend the language to meet your specific requirements as well as create seamless client-server communication without intermediaries such as Java or hidden frames.

What you will learn from this book

• ECMAScript basics, object-oriented programming techniques, and important Document Object Model (DOM) concepts
• How to implement regular expressions for data validation and string manipulation
• Methods for handling events to tie JavaScript to a Web user interface .
• Techniques for validating data, sorting tables, and dealing with errors
• How to communicate between JavaScript and browser plugins
• All about security issues, optimization, and intellectual property protections

Who this book is for

This book is for Web developers who want to use JavaScript to dramatically improve the usability of their Web sites and Web applications.

• Introduction
• What Is JavaScript?
• ECMAScript Basics
• Object Basics
• Inheritance
• JavaScript in the Browser
• DOM Basics
• Regular Expressions
• Browser and Operating System Detection
• All about Events
• Advanced DOM Techniques
• Forms and Data Integrity
• Sorting Tables
• Drag and Drop
• Error Handling
• XML in JavaScript
• Client-Server Communication
• Web Services
• Interacting with Plugins
• Deployment Issues
• The Evolution of JavaScript