Course Prerequisites

To gain the most from this class you should have:

• Experience with the HTML tag set and syntax
• Basic understanding of the ColdFusion language and SQL
• Knowledge of programming concepts

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Understand the role of client-side scripting in the browser
• Develop and integrate JavaScript into your Web applications
• Use JavaScript operators, expressions and control and data structures
• Implement cross browser JavaScript using the Document Object Model
• Understand JavaScript's effective use in form field validation
• Manipulate text strings through a variety of useful JavaScript methods
• Extract data from JavaScript programs to interact with server-side code

Course Outline

Unit 1: Introducing Fast Track to JavaScript

• Understanding the course prerequisites
• Reviewing the course outline
• Outlining the evolution of the Web
• Discussing static HTML
• Contrasting server-side scripting and client-side scripting
• The history of JavaScript
• Comparing things JavaScript can and cannot do

Unit 2: Integrating JavaScript into Web Pages

• Understanding the lifetime of a JavaScript program
• Using the SCRIPT tag
• Inserting JavaScript into tags
• Linking JavaScript from separate files
• Working with Event Handlers
• Debugging JavaScript
• Building JavaScript with Cold Fusion

Unit 3: JavaScript Expressions and Operators

• Naming rules for variables
• Data types
• Expressions
• Operators
• Arithmetic operators
• String operators
• Comparison operators
• Logical operators
• Assignment operators
• The typeof operator
• Understanding Objects
• Object properties
• Object methods
• Working with nested objects

Unit 4: The Document Object Model

• Introduction to the DOM
• The Navigator object
• The Window object
• Opening and closing windows
• Communicating between windows
• Working with frames in the Document Object Model
• The Location and History objects
• The Document object
• Redrawing window contents
• The Link Object
• The Image Object
• Caching images
• The DOM and Cascading Style Sheets

Unit 5: JavaScript Control Structures

• Using JavaScript Functions
• Advantages of functions
• Function syntax
• Scoping variables
• Function arguments
• Conditional statements
• Shorthand conditionals
• Loops
• While loops
• For loops
• The switch statement
• Integrating JavaScript and ColdFusion control structures

Unit 6: JavaScript Data Structures

• Creating objects with the Object constructor
• Adding, modifying and removing object properties
• The built-in Array object
• Creating arrays
• Accessing array elements
• Array properties and methods
• Built-in arrays in the Document Object Model
• Arrays and for loops
• Sorting arrays
• Integrating JavaScript data structures and ColdFusion recordsets

Unit 7: HTML Forms, the DOM and JavaScript

• Introduction to HTML Forms
• Server-side vs. client-side scripting with forms
• The Form object
• HTML Form Element Objects
• Text, Textarea and Password Objects
• Radio and Checkbox Objects
• Select and Option Objects
• Adding and removing options from a SELECT control
• Hidden form fields
• HTML Button Elements

Unit 8: Text Manipulation in JavaScript

• The String object
• String properties and methods
• Locating substrings
• Extracting substrings
• Type conversion between strings and numbers
• Converting between arrays and strings
• Exporting data from JavaScript
• HTML Forms
• The URL query string
• HTTP cookies

Appendix A: Custom Object Types in JavaScript

• Constructors
• Instantiating objects with the new operator
• Adding methods to a constructor
• Associative array notation vs. dot notation

Appendix B: Dates and Times in JavaScript

• JavaScript internal date/time representation
• Timeouts
• The Date object
• Formatting dates in JavaScript
• Date arithmetic in JavaScript

Appendix C: JavaScript and HTTP Cookies

• Introduction to HTTP Cookies
• Formatting Cookies
• Cookie Security
• JavaScript and Cookies
• Reading cookies
• Writing cookies
• Modifying and deleting cookies

Appendix D: JavaScript and WDDX

• Introduction to WDDX
• The wddx.js file
• Deserializing WDDX packets to JavaScript objects
• Serializing JavaScript Objects to WDDX packets

Appendix E: JavaScript Resources

• Books
• Web sites