Course

JavaScript and AJAX, Comprehensive

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JavaScript is primarily used on the client-side through the browser to alter displayed document content or create dynamic Web pages. Together with HTML5, it is becoming a “First Class Language” for cross-platform development, especially for mobile applications. This comprehensive course covers JavaScript as a programming language and includes introductions to open source frameworks and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). You will gain insight on useful Web architectures and build the foundation needed to harness this popular technology for the Web.

The first few weeks of the course are devoted to getting up to speed with language syntax, data types, operators, and programming constructs such as if/else, switch statements and loops. You will learn how to integrate JavaScript with HTML/CSS and write functions to handle user-initiated events such as mouse rollovers, clicking on a link, or submitting a form. The course emphasizes JavaScript’s object-oriented capability.

Since every HTML element can be referenced as a JavaScript object, the second half of the course is devoted to creating and manipulating objects such as windows, forms, images, and links with an emphasis on the Document Object Model. You will learn how to walk the W3C DOM tree, manage nodes and use event listeners. After learning the language, you will be introduced to several open source frameworks to facilitate application development; EXTJS will be used as an example library.

The course also covers how AJAX introduces asynchronous calls using the JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object to handle communication between the browser and the server, and when to use it to enhance user experience. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to write unobtrusive JavaScript programs and use AJAX to create a communication layer.

Topics include:

• History and interactions with three layers of a Web page
• Operators, data types, functions and variables in JavaScript
• Working with objects and arrays, inheritance
• Browser and Document Object Model
• Forms and programming input devices, validation
• Event handling and validation using Regex
• Form scripting, interaction with CSS
• Introduction to EXTJS and other JS frameworks
• Working with AJAX

Skills Needed: Familiarity with basic programming constructs (of a language such as C or Perl) and a working knowledge of HTML are required.