CSS: The Definitive Guide

Starting at the beginning, the book explores how JavaScript originated and evolved into what it is today. A detailed discussion of the components that make up a JavaScript implementation follows, with specific focus on standards such as ECMAScript and the Document Object Model (DOM). The differences in JavaScript implementations used in different popular web browsers are also discussed.

Building on that base, the book moves on to cover basic concepts of JavaScript including its version of object-oriented programming, inheritance, and its use in various markup languages such as HTML. An in-depth examination of events and event handling is followed by an exploration of browser detection techniques and a guide to using regular expressions in JavaScript. The book then takes all this knowledge and applies it to creating dynamic user interfaces.

The last part of the book is focused on advanced topics, including performance/memory optimization, best practices, and a look at where JavaScript is going in the future.

This book is aimed at three groups of readers:

• Experienced developers familiar with object-oriented programming who are looking to learn JavaScript as it relates to traditional OO languages such as Java and C++
• Web application developers attempting to enhance the usability of their web sites and web applications
• Novice JavaScript developers aiming to better understand the language

In addition, familiarity with the following related technologies is a strong indicator that this book is for you:

• Java
• PHP
• ASP.NET
• HTML
• CSS
• XML

This book is not aimed at beginners who lack a basic computer science background or those looking to add some simple user interactions to web sites. These readers should instead refer to Wrox’s Beginning JavaScript, 3rd Edition (Wiley, 2007).

This book covers:

• What Is JavaScript?—Explains the origins of JavaScript: where it came from, how it evolved, and what it is today. Concepts introduced include the relationship between JavaScript and ECMAScript, the Document Object Model (DOM), and the Browser Object Model (BOM). A discussion of the relevant standards from the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association (ECMA) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is also included.
• JavaScript in HTML—Examines how JavaScript is used in conjunction with HTML to create dynamic web pages. Introduces the various ways of embedding JavaScript into a page, including a discussion surrounding the JavaScript content-type and its relationship to the element.
• Language Basics—Introduces basic language concepts, including syntax and flow control statements. Explains the syntactic similarities of JavaScript and other C-based languages and points out the differences. Type coercion is introduced as it relates to built-in operators.
• Variables, Scope, and Memory—Explores how variables are handled in JavaScript given their loosely typed nature. A discussion about the differences between primitive and reference values is included, as is information about execution context as it relates to variables. Also, a discussion about garbage collection in JavaScript explains how memory is reclaimed when variables go out of scope.
• Reference Types—Covers all of the details regarding JavaScript's built-in reference types, such as Object and Array. Each reference type described in ECMA-262 is discussed both in theory and how they relate to browser implementations.
• Object-Oriented Programming—Explains how to use object-oriented programming in JavaScript. Since JavaScript has no concept of classes, several popular techniques are explored for object creation and inheritance. Also covered is the concept of function prototypes and how that relates to an overall OO approach.
• Anonymous Functions—Explores one of the most powerful aspects of JavaScript: anonymous functions. Topics include closures, how the this object works, the module pattern, and creating private object members.
• The Browser Object Model—Introduces the Browser Object Model (BOM), which is responsible for objects allowing interaction with the browser itself. Each of the BOM objects is covered, including window, document, location, navigator, and screen.
• Client Detection—Explains various approaches to detecting the client machine and its capabilities. Different techniques include capability detection and user-agent string detection. Each approach is discussed for pros and cons as well as situational appropriateness.
• The Document Object Model—Introduces the Document Object Model (DOM) objects available in JavaScript as defined in DOM Level 1. A brief introduction to XML and its relationship to the DOM gives way to an in-depth exploration of the entire DOM and how it allows developers to manipulate a page.
• DOM Levels 2 and 3 Explains how DOM Levels 2 and 3 augmented the DOM with additional properties, methods, and objects. Compatibility issues between Internet Explorer and other browsers are discussed.
• Events—Explains the nature of events in JavaScript, where they originated, legacy support, and how the DOM redefined how events should work. A variety of devices are covered, including the Wii and iPhone.
• Scripting Forms—Looks at using JavaScript to enhance form interactions and work around browser limitations. Discussion focuses on individual form elements such as text boxes and select boxes and on data validation and manipulation.
• Error Handling and Debugging—Discusses how browsers handle errors in JavaScript code and presents several ways to handle errors. Debugging tools and techniques are also discussed for each browser, including recommendations for simplifying the debugging process.
• XML in JavaScript—Presents the features of JavaScript used to read and manipulate eXtensible Markup Language (XML) data. Explains the differences in support and objects in various web browsers, and offers suggestions for easier cross-browser coding. This also covers the use of eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform XML data on the client.
• ECMAScript for XML—Discusses the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) extension to JavaScript, which is designed to simplify working with XML. Explains the advantages of E4X over using the DOM for XML manipulation.
• Ajax and JSON—Looks at common Ajax techniques, including the use of the XMLHttpRequest object and Internet Explorer's XDomainRequest object for cross-domain Ajax. Explains the differences in browser implementations and support as well as recommendations for usage.
• Advanced Techniques—Dives into some of the more complex JavaScript patterns, including function currying, partial function application, and dynamic functions. Also covers creating a custom event framework to enable simple event support for custom objects.
• Client-Side Storage—Discusses the various techniques for storing data on the client machine. Begins with a discussion of the most commonly supported feature, cookies, and then discusses newer functionality such as DOM storage.
• Best Practices—Explores approaches to working with JavaScript in an enterprise environment. Techniques for better maintainability are discussed, including coding techniques, formatting, and general programming practices. Execution performance is discussed and several techniques for speed optimization are introduced. Last, deployment issues are discussed, including how to create a build process.
• Upcoming APIs—Introduces APIs being created to augment JavaScript in the browser. Even though these APIs aren't yet complete or fully implemented, they are on the horizon and browsers have already begun partially implementing their features. Includes the Selectors API and HTML 5.
• The Evolution of JavaScript—Looks into the future of JavaScript to see where the language is headed. ECMAScript 3.1, ECMAScript 4, and ECMAScript Harmony are discussed.

This book is aimed at IT professionals and students of all experience levels. It does not assume that you have any previous experience with databases or programs that use them. It doesn’t even assume that you have experience with computers. All you really need is a willingness and desire to learn.

This book explains database design. It tells how to plan a database’s structure so the database will be robust, resistant to errors, and flexible enough to accommodate a reasonable amount of future change. It explains how to discover database requirements, build data models to study data needs, and refine those models to improve the database’s effectiveness.

The book solidifies these concepts by working through a detailed example that designs a realistic database. Later chapters explain how to actually build databases using two common database products: Access 2007 and MySQL.

The book finishes by describing some of the topics you need to understand to keep a database running effectively such as database maintenance and security.

This book explains database design. It tells how to determine what should go in a database and how the database should be structured to give the best results.

This book does not focus on actually creating the database. The details of database construction are different for different database tools so, to remain as generally as useful as possible, this book doesn’t concentrate on any particular database system. You can apply the techniques described here equally to whatever database tool you use whether it’s Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, or some other database product.

Most database products include free editions that you can use for smaller projects. For example, SQL Server Express Edition, Oracle Express Edition, and MySQL Community Server are all free.

To remain database neutral, the book does not assume you are using a particular database so you don’t need any particular software or hardware. To work through the Exercises, all you really need is a pencil and some paper. You are welcome to type solutions into your computer if you like but you may actually find working with pencil and paper easier than using a graphical design tool to draw pictures, at least until you are comfortable with database design and are ready to pick a computerized design tool.

• “Goals of Effective Database Design,” explains the reasons why people and organizations use databases. It explains a database’s purpose and conditions that it must satisfy to be useful. This also describes the basic ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) and CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) features that any good database should have. It explains in high-level general terms what makes a good database and what makes a bad database.

• “Database Types,” explains some of the different types of databases that you might decide to use. These include flat files, spreadsheets, hierarchical databases (XML), object databases, and relational databases. The relational database is one of the most powerful and most commonly used forms of database so it is the focus of this book, but it is important to realize that there are alternatives that may be more appropriate under certain circumstances. This gives some tips on deciding which kind of database might be best for a particular project.

• “Relational Database Fundamentals,” explains basic relational database concepts such as tables, rows, and columns. It explains the common usage of relational database terms in addition to the more technical terms that are sometimes used by database theorists. It describes different kinds of constraints that databases use to guarantee that the data is stored safely and consistently.

• “Understanding User Needs,” explains how to learn about the users’ needs and gather user requirements. It tells how to study the users’ current operations, existing databases (if any), and desired improvements. It describes common questions that you can ask to learn about users’ operations, desires, and needs, and how to build the results into requirements documents and specifications. This explains what use cases are and tells how to use them and the requirements to guide database design and to measure success.

• “Translating User Needs into Data Models,” introduces data modeling. It explains how to translate the user’s conceptual model and the requirements into other more precise models that define the database design rigorously. This describes several database modeling techniques including user-interface models, semantic object models, entity-relationship diagrams, and relational models.

• “Extracting Business Rules,” explains how a database can handle business rules. It explains what business rules are, how they differ from database structure requirements, and how you can identify business rules. This explains the benefits of separating business rules from the database structure and tells how achieve that separation.

• “Normalizing Data,” explains one of the biggest tools in database design: normalization. Normalization techniques allow you to restructure a database to increase its flexibility and make it more robust. This explains the various forms of normalization, emphasizing the stages that are most common and important: first, second, and third normal forms (1NF, 2NF, and 3NF). It explains how each of these kinds of normalization helps prevent errors and tells why it is sometimes better to leave a database slightly less normalized to improve performance.

• “Designing Databases to Support Software Applications,” explains how databases fit into the larger context of application design and lifecycle. This explains how later development depends on the underlying database design. It discusses multi-tier architectures that can help decouple the application and database design so there can be at least some changes to either without requiring changes to the other.

• “Common Design Patterns,” explains some common patterns that are useful in many applications. Some of these techniques include implementing various kinds of relationships among objects, storing hierarchical and network data, recording temporal data, and logging and locking.

• “Common Design Pitfalls,” explains some common design mistakes that occur in database development. It describes problems that can arise from insufficient planning, incorrect normalization, and obsession with ID fields and performance.

• “User Needs and Requirements,” walks through the steps required to analyze the users’ problem, define requirements, and create use cases. It describes interviews with fictitious customers that are used to identify the application’s needs and translate them into database requirements.

• “Building a Data Model,” translates the requirements gathered in the previous into a series of data models that precisely define the database’s structure. This builds user-interface models, entity-relationship diagrams, semantic object models, and relational models to refine the database’s initial design. The final relational models match the structure of a relational database fairly closely so they are easy to implement.

• “Extracting Business Rules,” identifies the business rules embedded in the relational model. It shows how to extract those rules in order to separate them logically from the database’s structure. This makes the database more robust in the face of future changes to the business rules.

• “Normalization and Refinement,” refines the relational model by normalizing it. It walks through several versions of the database that are in different normal forms. It then selects the degree of normalization that provides a reasonable tradeoff between robust design and acceptable performance.

• “Microsoft Access,” explains how to build a database with Microsoft Access 2007. This explains enough to get started and to use Access to build non-trivial databases. You can use other versions of Access to work through this, although the locations of menus, buttons, and other Access features are different in different versions.

• “MySQL,” explains how to build a database with MySQL. This tells where to download a free version of MySQL. It explains how to use the MySQL Command Line Client as well as some useful graphical tools including MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Workbench.

• “Introduction to SQL,” provides an introduction to SQL (Structured Query Language). It explains how to use SQL commands to add, insert, update, and delete data. By using SQL, you can help insulate a program from the idiosyncrasies of the particular database product that it uses to store data.

• “Building Databases with SQL Scripts,” explains how to use SQL scripts to build a database. It explains the advantages of this technique, such as the ability to create scripts to initialize a database before performing tests. It also explains some of the restrictions on this method, such as the fact that the user must create and delete tables in specific orders to satisfy table relationships.

• “Database Maintenance,” describes some of the database maintenance issues that are part of any database application. Though performing and restoring backups, compressing tables, rebuilding indexes, and populating data warehouses are strictly not database design tasks, they are essential to any working application.

• “Database Security,” explains database security issues. It explains the kinds of security that some database products provide. It also explains some additional techniques that can enhance database security such as using database views to appropriately restrict the users’ access to data.

That said, because PHP is primarily a Web technology, it will help if you have at least some knowledge of other Web technologies, particularly HTML and CSS.

Many Web applications make use of a database to store data, and this book contains three chapters on working with MySQL databases. Once again, if you’re already familiar with databases in general — and MySQL in particular — you’ll be able to fly through these chapters. However, even if you’ve never touched a database before in your life, you should still be able to pick up a working knowledge by reading through these chapters.

What This Book Covers

This book gives you a broad understanding of the PHP language and its associated technologies. You explore a wide range of topics, including:

• installing a copy of the PHP engine on Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X; other ways you can install or use PHP; how to write a simple PHP script.
• basic PHP language concepts. variables, data types, operators, expressions, and constants.
• how to change the flow of your scripts by creating decisions and loops. if, else, and switch statements; the ternary operator; and the do, while, for, break, and continue statements. how to nest loops, and how to mix decisions and looping with blocks of HTML.
• PHP’s handling of strings, or sequences of characters; how to create strings; how to retrieve characters from a string; and how to manipulate strings with functions such as strlen(), substr(), strstr(), strpos(), str_replace(), and printf(), to name but a few.
• arrays — variables that can hold multiple values. You learn the difference between indexed and associative arrays, and find out how to create arrays and access their individual elements; array manipulation, including functions such as print_r(), array_slice(), count(), sort(), array_merge(), and list(). You also learn how to create foreach loops, as well as how to work with multidimensional arrays.
• functions — blocks of code that you can use again and again. You look at how to call built-in functions, and how to work with variable functions. You also study how to create your own functions, including defining parameters, returning values, understanding scope, and using anonymous functions. Other function-related topics such as references and recursion are also explored.
• object-oriented programming. You look at the advantages of an object-oriented approach, and learn how to build classes, properties, and methods, and how to create and use objects. You also explore more advanced topics such as overloading, inheritance, interfaces, constructors and destructors, autoloading, and namespaces.
• how to use PHP to create interactive Web forms. You learn how to create HTML forms, how to capture form data in PHP, and how to use PHP to generate dynamic forms. You also explore file upload forms and page redirection.
• how to preserve an application’s state between page views. You explore three different strategies: query strings, cookies, and PHP sessions. Includes an example user login system.
• PHP’s file and directory handling functions. You learn how to open and close files; how to find out more information about a file; how to read from and write to files; how to work with file permissions; how to copy, rename, and delete files; and how to manipulate directories. Simple text editor as an example.
• databases in general and MySQL in particular, and how to work with MySQL databases using PHP. You learn some database and SQL theory; look at how to connect to MySQL from PHP; and study how to retrieve, insert, update, and delete data in a MySQL database.
• PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository. It’s a large collection of reusable code modules that can really help to speed up your application development. You look at how to install and use PEAR packages, and explore three useful packages: Net_UserAgent_Detect, HTML_Table, and HTML_QuickForm.
• ways that your PHP applications can interact with the outside world. A detailed look at date and time handling, including various useful built-in date functions, as well as the DateTime and DateTimeZone classes. Also how to work closely with HTTP request and response headers, how to retrieve Web server information, and how to send email from within your scripts.
• using PHP to generate graphics on the fly. You study some computer graphics fundamentals, then look at how to create new images, as well as modify existing images. Along the way you explore colors, drawing functions, image formats, transparency, opacity, and generating text within images.
• regular expressions. These clever pattern-matching tools let you search for very specific patterns of text within strings; regular expression syntax, how to use PHP’s regular expression functions to search for and replace patterns of text. Lots of examples are included to make the concepts clear.
• XML — eXtensible Markup Language — and how to manipulate XML from within your PHP scripts. You learn about XML and its uses, and look at various ways to read and write XML with PHP, including XML Parser, the XML DOM extension, and SimpleXML. You also take a brief look at XML stylesheets, including XSL and XSLT.
• how to configure PHP, and all the configuration directives available.
• alternative databases to MySQL that are supported by PHP.
• using PHP to write command-line scripts, further enhancing the power and flexibility of your applications.

Also, as you'd imagine, this book covers the new features added to PHP in version 5.3. However, if you're still using an older version of PHP, don't panic – the vast majority of the book applies to all versions of PHP.

"The techniques in this book are not an option for testers—they are mandatory and these are the guys to tell you how to apply them!"
—HarryRobinson, Google.

Rigorously test and improve the security of all your Web software!

It’s as certain as death and taxes: hackers will mercilessly attack your Web sites, applications, and services. If you’re vulnerable, you’d better discover these attacks yourself, before the black hats do. Now, there’s a definitive, hands-on guide to security-testing any Web-based software: How to Break Web Software.

In this book, two renowned experts address every category of Web software exploit: attacks on clients, servers, state, user inputs, and more. You’ll master powerful attack tools and techniques as you uncover dozens of crucial, widely exploited flaws in Web architecture and coding. The authors reveal where to look for potential threats and attack vectors, how to rigorously test for each of them, and how to mitigate the problems you find. Coverage includes

·   Client vulnerabilities, including attacks on client-side validation

·   State-based attacks: hidden fields, CGI parameters, cookie poisoning, URL jumping, and session hijacking

·   Attacks on user-supplied inputs: cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and directory traversal

·   Language- and technology-based attacks: buffer overflows, canonicalization, and NULL string attacks

·   Server attacks: SQL Injection with stored procedures, command injection, and server fingerprinting

·   Cryptography, privacy, and attacks on Web services

Your Web software is mission-critical—it can’t be compromised. Whether you’re a developer, tester, QA specialist, or IT manager, this book will help you protect that software—systematically.

• How to use CSS3 to enhance your pages, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of usability, accessibility, and efficiency

• When and how to provide workarounds and fallbacks for older, non-supporting browsers

• How to create stunning designs with unique typography and beautiful graphic details

• Advanced new selectors to streamline your markup and make it less prone to human errors

• New methods for creating multiple-column layouts

• How to quickly and easily create mobile-optimized web designs without using scripting

In 30 brief, engaging chapters, Lacey guides you through everything from defining roles to setting priorities to determining team velocity, choosing a sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Along the way, he explains why Scrum can seem counterintuitive, offers a solid grounding in the core agile concepts that make it work, and shows where it can (and shouldn’t) be modified. Coverage includes

• Getting teams on board, and bringing new team members aboard after you’ve started
  
• Creating a “definition of done” for the team and organization
• Implementing the strong technical practices that are indispensable for agile success
• Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning
• Keeping defects in check
• Running productive daily standup meetings
• Keeping people engaged with pair programming
• Managing culture clashes on Scrum teams
• Performing “emergency procedures” to get sprints back on track
• Establishing a pace your team can truly sustain
• Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver
• Documenting Scrum projects effectively
• Prioritizing and estimating large backlogs
• Integrating outsourced and offshored components

Packed with real-world examples from Lacey’s own experience, this book is invaluable to everyone transitioning to agile: developers, architects, testers, managers, and project owners alike.