Book Image

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional

By : Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike van Putten, Codestars By Rob Percival
4 (5)
Book Image

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional

4 (5)
By: Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike van Putten, Codestars By Rob Percival

Overview of this book

This book demonstrates the capabilities of JavaScript for web application development by combining theoretical learning with code exercises and fun projects that you can challenge yourself with. The guiding principle of the book is to show how straightforward JavaScript techniques can be used to make web apps ranging from dynamic websites to simple browser-based games. JavaScript from Beginner to Professional focuses on key programming concepts and Document Object Model manipulations that are used to solve common problems in professional web applications. These include data validation, manipulating the appearance of web pages, working with asynchronous and concurrent code. The book uses project-based learning to provide context for the theoretical components in a series of code examples that can be used as modules of an application, such as input validators, games, and simple animations. This will be supplemented with a brief crash course on HTML and CSS to illustrate how JavaScript components fit into a complete web application. As you learn the concepts, you can try them in your own editor or browser console to get a solid understanding of how they work and what they do. By the end of this JavaScript book, you will feel confident writing core JavaScript code and be equipped to progress to more advanced libraries, frameworks, and environments such as React, Angular, and Node.js.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
16
Other Books You May Enjoy
17
Index

Global methods

The global JavaScript methods can be used without referring to the built-in object they are part of. This means that we can just use the method name as if it is a function that has been defined inside the scope we are in, without the "object" in front of it. For example, instead of writing:

let x = 7;
console.log(Number.isNaN(x));

You can also write:

console.log(isNaN(x));

So, the Number can be left out, because isNaN is made globally available without referring to the class it belongs to (in this instance, the Number class). In this case, both of these console.log statements will log false (they are doing the exact same thing), because isNaN returns true when it isn't a number. And 7 is a number, so it will log false.

JavaScript has been built to have these available directly, so to achieve this, some magic is going on beneath the surface. The JavaScript creators chose the methods that they thought were most common. So the...