REVIEW:Introduction to Interactive Programming on the Internet Using HTML & JavaScript

Abstract

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-15 March 2001-REVIEW:Introduction to Interactive Programming on the Internet Using HTML & JavaScript (C)1994-2001 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com At the bottom end of the scale of books on computer science, 'Internet literary' texts cover topics such as e-mail, news groups and searching the Internet -- stuff that students coming out of high school have already learned. On the upper end of the scale there are programming texts in languages like C++ and Java, but these are aimed at computer science majors. In the middle of the scale, and more suited toward a general audience, is HTML and JavaScript. This book is an introduction towards these two Internet programming languages and aimed for people who want to equip themselves with substantive Internet programming skills. The book aims to provide all of the programming fundamentals that are needed in order to pursue virtually any programming endeavour on the Internet. The first couple of chapters give a brief overview and history of the Internet and the World Wide Web and the distinctions between the two. The book briefly explores the various types of transactions on the Internet at this point, including transferring web pages to browsers for viewing and transferring web pages to web servers so that they are available on the Internet. Lessons 3 through 8 provide an introduction to HTML and web page construction. Rather than cover every single aspect of HTML the book sticks to a subset of HTML that works on virtually any browser.

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-15 March 2001-REVIEW:Introduction to Interactive Programming on the Internet Using HTML & JavaScript (C)1994-2001 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com At the bottom end of the scale of books on computer science, 'Internet literary' texts cover topics such as e-mail, news groups and searching the Internet -- stuff that students coming out of high school have already learned. On the upper end of the scale there are programming texts in languages like C++ and Java, but these are aimed at computer science majors. In the middle of the scale, and more suited toward a general audience, is HTML and JavaScript. This book is an introduction towards these two Internet programming languages and aimed for people who want to equip themselves with substantive Internet programming skills. The book aims to provide all of the programming fundamentals that are needed in order to pursue virtually any programming endeavour on the Internet. The first couple of chapters give a brief overview and history of the Internet and the World Wide Web and the distinctions between the two. The book briefly explores the various types of transactions on the Internet at this point, including transferring web pages to browsers for viewing and transferring web pages to web servers so that they are available on the Internet. Lessons 3 through 8 provide an introduction to HTML and web page construction. Rather than cover every single aspect of HTML the book sticks to a subset of HTML that works on virtually any browser. The book looks at the fundamentals of HTML such as the syntax of tags and attributes, linking and site structure, various uses of images and page formatting with tables and frames. The remainder of the book is dedicated to JavaScript, which enables interactive programming on the Internet. To ensure full browser support the book again sticks to a standardised subset of JavaScript. This part explores the use of variables, functions, objects, loops and arrays. Each of the 18 lessons features a summary, review questions and exercises. The exercises consist of both stand-alone exercises and two project threads that run throughout the book and guide the reader through the construction of a structured website. The book also contains several optional sections that may be used as an extra challenge by the more advanced reader. The course assumes no prior knowledge of HTML or a programming language. The reader really only needs to be familiar with word processing and creating and organising documents. On the Internet side of things the reader should be familiar with surfing the Internet with a browser. The only person the book does not recommend itself to is a professional programmer. The book is well set out, with the 18 'lessons' each have around 12 sub- sections. Important words and terms are in bold while notes which give helpful hints and tips along the way appear in shaded boxes. Even though the layout of the information is quite straight forward it needs quite a lot of concentration to understand and follow, especially if there are new concepts which you have not encountered before. There are lots of graphics to help you further understand what the languages do when they are rendered into a web page. The narrative from the author could probably be a lot more simplistic than it is. The more complicated the language is in this type of book the more difficult it is to understand the things that it is actually trying to teach. If you want to create a website there are much more fun ways to do it, such as by using authoring software. But if you are taking a serious approach to making web pages then this is probably more appropriate. The book has good, detailed contents which makes it very easy to reference. There are also appendices at the back which provide a quick reference for the HTML elements and the JavaScript objects covered, as well as colour representations and some answers to selected review questions in the book. CONCLUSION:This book provides a sound introduction to Internet programming using HTML and JavaScript, although there are books out there that are an easier read than this one. The reader will need to possess some computer and Internet skills to use the book effectively, but overall this is a good place to start in HTML and JavaScript. Title:Introduction to Interactive Programming on the Internet Using HTML & JavaScript Author:Craig D. Knuckles Published by:John Wiley & Sons ISBN:0-471-38366-X Price:GBP23.95 Reviewer:Verity Graley ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))