If you want to achieve JavaScript's full potential, it is critical to understand its nature, history, and limitations. This book sets the stage by covering JavaScript from its very beginning to the present-day incarnations that include support for the DOM and Ajax. It also shows you how to extend this powerful language to meet specific needs and create seamless client-server communication without intermediaries such as Java or hidden frames.

You'll explore basic concepts of JavaScript including its version of object-oriented programming, inheritance, and its use in HTML and XHTML. A detailed discussion of the components that make up a JavaScript implementation follows, with specific focus on standards such as ECMAScript and DOM. All three levels of DOM are explained, including advanced topics such as event simulation, XML parsing, and XPath queries. You'll also learn how to utilize regular expressions and build dynamic user interfaces. This valuable insight will help you apply JavaScript solutions to the business problems faced by Web developers everywhere.

What you will learn from this book

• All of the details regarding JavaScript's built-in reference types

• How to use object-oriented programming in JavaScript

• Ways to detect the client machine and its capabilities

• Debugging tools and techniques for each browser

• Steps for reading and manipulating XML data

• How to create a custom event framework

• Various techniques for storing data on the client machine

• Approaches to working with JavaScript in an enterprise environment

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 and for those with programming experience, especially object-oriented programming experience.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.