As you can guess from the title of the book, this book is designed and set up for kids so that they can teach themselves JavaScript and create some projects using JavaScript.
By abstracting the core web programming in an unparalleled way, JavaScript changed websites and web apps forever. Boring static websites and non-interactive websites have now become quite awesome with the touch of JavaScript. Using JavaScript, you can develop web applications, even smartphone applications too, quickly without compromising quality. You can be very productive and deal with almost no configuration on your hardware and software if you start playing with JavaScript. Please remember that this is not a reference book, but you can learn every basic concepts of JavaScript from it. So, for the kids aged 10 and above, this will be a perfect book to discover the world of JavaScript.
Chapter 1, Exploring JavaScript in the Console, discusses JavaScript and the JavaScript Development Environment, including Google Developer Tools. We will install the necessary software and print a few simple lines of code in this chapter.
Chapter 2, Solving Problems Using JavaScript, covers JavaScript fundamentals from the main syntax to some easy commands in the console. We will learn how variables work and what can be achieved with arithmetic operators. We will also run some simple commands to solve problems inside the console.
Chapter 3, Introducing HTML and CSS, will make real use of JavaScript and will cover HTML, which empowers the readers to make use of JavaScript not only in the console but also in the browser's view. We will also explain the basics of CSS, such as CSS selectors, and CSS layouts.
Chapter 4, Diving a Bit Deeper, covers some of the more advanced features that JavaScript offers. We discuss for and while loops, if statements, and switches-case.
Chapter 5, Ahoy! Sailing into Battle, teaches us how to develop the famous game, Battleship. Building upon what we've learned in the previous chapters, the tiny tots will learn to put this information into use.
Chapter 6, Exploring the Benefits of jQuery, is all about jQuery, a famous JavaScript library, and the advantages of using it.
Chapter 7, Introducing the Canvas, discusses HTML canvas, and we will learn how we can use it on our projects.
Chapter 8, Building Rat-man!, teaches us to develop a famous game, Pac-Man, except there is a rat, some cats, and lots and lots of cheese balls to eat! ;)
Chapter 9, Tidying up Your Code Using OOP, teaches object-oriented programming (OOP) and discusses how JavaScript is an OOP language.
Chapter 10, Possibilities, shows the reader what is possible using the skills they have developed reading this book.
Throughout this book, we have used Google Chrome as our browser to run our JavaScript code on the console. We wrote our code using Atom, a famous text editor. You can use any modern web browser and text editor, but I highly recommend that you to use these open source software to make any of the projects discussed in this book.
If you've never written code before, or you are completely new to the world of web programming, then this book is the right choice for you. This book is for kids of age 10 years and above and adults who are completely new to the world of programming and want to get introduced to programming.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Click the AtomSetup.exe file to get started with installing Atom."
A block of code is set as follows:
document.write("Hello");
document.write("World");
document.write("!");New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."
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You can download the example code files from your account at http://www.packtpub.com for all the Packt Publishing books you have purchased. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/JavaScript_Projects_for_Kids_ColorImages.pdf.
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