Code Style: Anchor Points: Javascript & Document Object Model (DOM)

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Javascript anchors

Javascript language references

Yahoo! Javascript evangelist Douglas Crockford presents a five part video series on Javascript.
Core JavaScript 1.5 Guide at Mozilla is a guide to the core Javascript language with reference to Mozilla browsers including basic coverage of Unicode in Javascript.
JavaScript's class-less objects from the JavaRanch Journal, October 2008, explains the hash table nature of Javascript objects and how that affects the nature of constructors, prototypes and inheritance.

Javascript programming techniques

10 Small Things You May Not Know About Javascript picks out useful language features and techniques.
The seven deadly sins of Javascript implementation from Smashing Magazine highlights scripting techniques to be avoided.
Javascript programming patterns outlines 6 useful and important Javascript design patterns.
Javascript inheritance pattern by Dmitry Baranovskiy considers three approaches.
Advanced Javascript techniques you should know at Six Revisions gives examples of closures, variable argument handling, DOM node selection, Javascript namespaces.

Ajax and JSON

JSON Javascript tutorial at Skill Guru persuades you to use this data structure with a few simple examples.
Mastering Ajax: Using JSON for data transfer is part 10 of a DeveloperWorks series.
Douglas Crockford explains the origins of the JSON Saga.

DOM scripting

Traversing an HTML table with JavaScript and DOM Interfaces at Mozilla gives a simple example of how to generate an HTML table structure using DOM element creation.
Keyboard shorcuts on the web from Cats Who Code is a quick guide to keyboard input with Javascript.
Javascript event compatibility tables from Quirks Mode shows Javascript event handler support in common browsers.

DOM & CSS scripting

The open source Dojo Ajax toolkit provides comprehensive functionality for Javascript applications with modular extensions.
The MochiKit lightweight Javascript library with a test driven ethos and thorough documentation.
The Scriptaculous Javascript library is an extension to the popular Prototype application framework.
Yahoo! Javascript Development Center covers all aspects of their Javascript driven map, widget and search tools, plus the Yahoo! User Interface Library, known as YUI.
The Cross-Browser site is a collection of experimental scripting interfaces, including complex parametric movement functions.
Project Seven is a standards aware demonstration site for priced products, but with tutorials and free downloads for Macromedia Dreamweaver. Working samples of multi-part dynamic menus, scrolling things and widgets.
Gecko DOM reference is a guide to the object reference scheme used in the rendering engine which sits behind Mozilla and Netscape 6.

Do it yourself AJAX

Keeping JavaScript Dependencies At Bay by Christian Heilmann builds up a framework for component-based Javascript application development using a dynamic load and call-back mechanism.

Browser CSS3 DOM references

Internet Explorer CSS Attributes at MSDN.
Gecko DOM Reference for Firefox at Mozilla Developer Center.
CSS 2.1 & 3 Support in KHTML 3.4 for Konqueror
Supported CSS properties for Safari
CSS3/Javascript coding techniques from Smashing Magazine is a catalogue of 50 ground breaking tutorials and examples.
Supports.js is a Javascript library that detects support for CSS properties.

Javascript frameworks

DeveloperWorks' Compare JavaScript frameworks is an introduction to and comparison of Prototype, JQuery, YUI, ExtJS and MooTools coding schemes and features.
Find the right Javascript solution from Smashing Magazine is a 7 step checklist approach to choose the right Javascript framework.
YUI 3.0.0: First GA release of YUI's next-generation codeline highlights key features of the Yahoo! user interface framework.

User interface and browser enhancement with Javascript

Text2Pass is a JQuery plugin that enables you temporarily to display clear text in a password field as a prompt for user input.
Keith Clark labs' ie-css3.js package provides CSS3 pseudo-class support for Internet Explorer, with some notable limitations.
How to detect font-smoothing using Javascript introduces a library to optimise Web font rendering on Windows systems.

Javascript development utilities

Helium CSS is a Javscript tool to discover un-used CSS selectors across multiple Web pages.
Moxidoc is a Javascript documentation processor that uses a JavaDoc syntax.

Javascript books

Javascript, The Definitive Guide

Cover illustration of Javascript, The Definitive Guide By David Flanagan

This is an invaluable guide to what Flanagan calls "defensive coding" for the World Wide Web. The opening chapters introduce all the essentials and the 4^th edition includes new chapters on the W3C DOMs, but the reference section is where the lasting value is, with usage notes, browser bugs and implementation details.

Order this book online at Amazon UK

JavaScript Pocket Reference

Cover illustration of Javascript Pocket Reference By David Flanagan

This condensed version of The Definitive Guide, retains the key parts of the language reference with a hard boiled overview of the language syntax and operators.

Order this book online at Amazon UK

Javascript newsgroups

The main newsgroup for Javascript is comp.lang.javascript, but it's a very high traffic group with a lot of "noise" so you will need a good news reader. With the amount of traffic already present, it pays to read the FAQ first and search for previous posts on your topic; it's very likely to have been discussed previously. Regular posters worth reading include the FAQ maintainer Jim Ley, and Martin Honnen.

The comp.lang.java.javascript group is a low-traffic alternative limited to Java related Javascript issues.

See Anchor Points: Code Style for a digest of links from the site log.

Anchor Points: Javascript & DOM

Other external links

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