Introduction
With billions of people using the Internet today, there is a rapidly growing trend to replace traditional websites, where pages link to other pages with a single page, with applications that have richly interactive elements. The main reason for this is that users have become less patient with clicking, waiting, and then having to navigate back and forth between web pages. Instead, they want websites to behave more like the applications they are used to on their computers and mobile devices.
In fact, in just the next 24 hours, millions of new web pages will be added to the Internet. The majority of these pages will be written in HTML, with CSS to style elements and with JavaScript to provide interaction between the user and back-end services.
As you complete the 24 one-hour lessons in this book, you will gain a practical understanding of how to incorporate JavaScript with the powerful jQuery library to provide rich user interactions in your web pages. You will gain the valuable skills of adding dynamic code that allows web pages to instantly react to mouse clicks and finger swipes, interact with back-end services to store and retrieve data from the web server, and create robust Internet applications.
Each hour in the book provides fundamentals that are necessary to create professional web applications. The book includes some basics on using HTML and CSS to get you started, even if you’ve never used them before. You are provided with code examples that you can implement and expand as your understanding increases. In fact, in just the first lesson in the book, you create a dynamic web page using jQuery and JavaScript.
So pull up a chair, sit back, and enjoy the ride of programming rich Internet applications with jQuery and JavaScript.
Beyond jQuery and JavaScript
This book covers more than jQuery and JavaScript because you need to know more than the language structure to create truly useful web applications. The goal of this book is to give you the fundamental skills needed to create fully functional and interactive web applications in just 24 short, easy lessons. This book covers the following key skills and technologies:
HTML is the most current recommendation for web page creation. Every example in this book is validated HTML5, the most recent recommended version.
CSS is the standard method for formatting web elements. You not only learn how to write CSS and CSS3, but also how to dynamically modify it on the fly using jQuery and JavaScript.
JavaScript is the best method to provide interactions in web pages without the need to load a new page from the server. This is the standard language on which most decent web applications are built.
jQuery, jQueryUI, and jQueryMobile are some of the most popular and robust libraries for JavaScript. jQuery provides very quick access to web page elements and a robust set of features for web application interaction. jQuery provides additional UI and mobile libraries that provide rich UI components for traditional web applications as well as mobile web applications.
AJAX is the standard method that web applications use to interact with web servers and other services. The book includes several examples of using AJAX to interact with web servers, Google, Facebook, and other popular web services.
Code Examples
Most of the examples in the book provide the following elements:
HTML code—Code necessary to provide the web page framework in the browser.
CSS code—Code necessary to style the web page elements correctly.
JavaScript code—This includes both the jQuery and JavaScript code that provide interactions among the user, web page elements, and web services.
Figures—Most of the examples include one or more figures that illustrate the behavior of the code in the browser.
The examples in the book are basic to make it easier for you to learn and implement. Many of them can be expanded and used in your own web pages. In fact, some of the exercises at the end of each hour have you expand on the examples.
All the examples in the book have been tested for compatibility with the latest version of the major web browsers, including Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Special Elements
As you complete each lesson, margin notes help you immediately apply what you just learned to your own web pages.
Whenever a new term is used, it is clearly explained. No flipping back and forth to a glossary!
Tip
Tips and tricks to save you precious time are set aside in Tips so that you can spot them quickly.
Note
Notes highlight interesting information you should be sure not to miss.
Caution
When there’s something you need to watch out for, you’ll be warned about it in a Caution.
Q&A, Quizzes, and Exercises
Every hour ends with a short question-and-answer session that addresses the kind of “dumb questions” everyone wants to ask. A brief but complete quiz lets you test yourself to be sure you understand everything presented in the hour. Finally, one or two optional exercises give you a chance to practice your new skills before you move on.