JavaScript from a Java Developer's Perspective

About the Presentation

During this session, which was held on May 4th, 2007 at the Crisp office, I walked through some of the pitfalls I encountered while trying to figure out how the language known as JavaScript (JScript, ECMAScript...) works.

The presentation is set up as a series of short snippets of JavaScript meant to be stepped through in Firebug. Some of the examples also need JavaScript 1.7 which today means they require Firefox 2.0.

Pretty much all the examples will launch the debugger right away caused by the debugger keyword.

Pretty much all the examples will also produce output in two ways.

• To the Firebug console (or, if not available, as a series of alerts...)
• To a console window that will pop up (pop-up blocker will need to be disabled)

Note that this has only been tested with Firefox 2.0. It may or may not work with other browsers.

With that...on to the Presentation!

Suggested Reading (Books)

• JavaScript, The Definitive Guide (David Flanagan)
• Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Nicholas C. Zakas)
• Pro JavaScript Techniques (John Resig)
• Prototype & Scriptaculous in Action (Crane, Bibeault, Locke)

Suggested Reading (Sites)

• http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm
• http://www.jibbering.com/faq/
• http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
• http://www.mozilla.org/js/language/es4/
• http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html
• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/JavaScript
• http://www.json.org/
• http://www.getfirebug.com/