JavaScript: The Good Parts

What's the best approach for developing an application with JavaScript? This book helps you answer that question with numerous JavaScript coding patterns and best practices. If you're an experienced developer looking to solve problems related to objects, functions, inheritance, and other language-specific categories, the abstractions and code templates in this guide are ideal -- whether you're writing a client-side, server-side, or desktop application with JavaScript.

Written by JavaScript expert Stoyan Stefanov -- Senior Yahoo! Technical and architect of YSlow 2.0, the web page performance optimization tool -- JavaScript Patterns includes practical advice for implementing each pattern discussed, along with several hands-on examples. You'll also learn about anti-patterns: common programming approaches that cause more problems than they solve.

• Explore useful habits for writing high-quality JavaScript code, such as avoiding globals, using single var declarations, and more
• Learn why literal notation patterns are simpler alternatives to constructor functions
• Discover different ways to define a function in JavaScript
• Create objects that go beyond the basic patterns of using object literals and constructor functions
• Learn the options available for code reuse and inheritance in JavaScript
• Study sample JavaScript approaches to common design patterns such as Singleton, Factory, Decorator, and more
• Examine patterns that apply specifically to the client-side browser environment

Building rich JavaScript applications that bring a desktop experience to the Web requires moving state from the server to the client side—not a simple task. This hands-on book takes proficient JavaScript developers through all the steps necessary to create state-of-the-art applications, including structure, templating, frameworks, communicating with the server, and many other issues.

Throughout the book, you'll work with real-world example applications to help you grasp the concepts involved. Learn how to create JavaScript applications that offer a more responsive and improved experience.

• Use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, and learn how to manage dependencies inside your application
• Get an introduction to templating and data binding
• Learn about loading remote data, Ajax, and cross-domain requests
• Create realtime applications with WebSockets and Node.js
• Accept dropped files and upload data with progress indicators
• Use major frameworks and libraries, including jQuery, Spine, and Backbone
• Write tests and use the console to debug your applications
• Get deployment best practices, such as caching and minification

Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell’s original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking—and help you build the highest quality code.

Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you:

• Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativity
• Reap the benefits of collaborative development
• Apply defensive programming techniques to reduce and flush out errors
• Exploit opportunities to refactor—or evolve—code, and do it safely
• Use construction practices that are right-weight for your project
• Debug problems quickly and effectively
• Resolve critical construction issues early and correctly
• Build quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project

Since 1996, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has been the bible for JavaScript programmers—a programmer's guide and comprehensive reference to the core language and to the client-side JavaScript APIs defined by web browsers.

The 6th edition covers HTML5 and ECMAScript 5. Many chapters have been completely rewritten to bring them in line with today's best web development practices. New chapters in this edition document jQuery and server side JavaScript. It's recommended for experienced programmers who want to learn the programming language of the Web, and for current JavaScript programmers who want to master it.

"A must-have reference for expert JavaScript programmers...well-organized and detailed."

--Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript, CTO of Mozilla

"I made a career of what I learned from JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.”

-- Andrew Hedges, Tapulous

How does MongoDB help you manage a huMONGOus amount of data collected through your web application? With this authoritative introduction, you'll learn the many advantages of using document-oriented databases, and discover why MongoDB is a reliable, high-performance system that allows for almost infinite horizontal scalability.

Written by engineers from 10gen, the company that develops and supports this open source database, MongoDB: The Definitive Guide provides guidance for database developers, advanced configuration for system administrators, and an overview of the concepts and use cases for other people on your project. Learn how easy it is to handle data as self-contained JSON-style documents, rather than as records in a relational database.

• Explore ways that document-oriented storage will work for your project
• Learn how MongoDB’s schema-free data model handles documents, collections, and multiple databases
• Execute basic write operations, and create complex queries to find data with any criteria
• Use indexes, aggregation tools, and other advanced query techniques
• Learn about monitoring, security and authentication, backup and repair, and more
• Set up master-slave and automatic failover replication in MongoDB
• Use sharding to scale MongoDB horizontally, and learn how it impacts applications
• Get example applications written in Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby

Web site design has grown up. Unlike the old days, when designers cobbled together chunky HTML, bandwidth-hogging graphics, and a prayer to make their sites look good, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) now lets your inner designer come out and play. But CSS isn't just a tool to pretty up your site; it's a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentation--from fonts and colors to page layout. CSS: The Missing Manual clearly explains this powerful design language and how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.

Like their counterparts in print page-layout programs, style sheets allow designers to apply typographic styles, graphic enhancements, and precise layout instructions to elements on a Web page. Unfortunately, due to CSS's complexity and the many challenges of building pages that work in all Web browsers, most Web authors treat CSS as a kind of window-dressing to spruce up the appearance of their sites. Integrating CSS with a site's underlying HTML is hard work, and often frustratingly complicated. As a result many of the most powerful features of CSS are left untapped. With this book, beginners and Web-building veterans alike can learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of CSS and take complete control over their Web pages' appearance.

Author David McFarland (the bestselling author of O'Reilly's Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual) combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You'll learn how to:

• Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS



• Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders



• Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages



• Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows



• Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML



• Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your Web pages work consistently from browser to browser



• Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don't require using old techniques like HTML tables



• Style Web pages for printing

Unlike competing books, this Missing Manual doesn't assume that everyone in the world only surfs the Web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer; our book provides support for all major Web browsers and is one of the first books to thoroughly document the newly expanded CSS support in IE7, currently in beta release.

Want to learn how to turn humdrum Web sites into destinations that will capture viewers and keep them longer? Pick up CSS: The Missing Manual and learn the real magic of this tool.