Book Image

YUI 2.8: Learning the Library

Book Image

YUI 2.8: Learning the Library

Overview of this book

The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls written in JavaScript for building Rich Internet Applications, across all major browsers and independently of any server technology. There's a lot of functionality baked into YUI, but getting to and understanding that functionality is not for the faint of heart. This book gives you a clear picture of YUI through a step-by-step approach, packed with lots of examples.YUI 2.8: Learning the Library covers all released (non-beta) components of the YUI 2.8 Library in detail with plenty of working examples, looking at the classes that make up each component and the properties and methods that can be used. It includes a series of practical examples to reinforce how each component should/can be used, showing its use to create complex, fully featured, cross-browser, Web 2.0 user interfaces. It has been updated from its first edition with the addition of several chapters covering several new controls and enriched with lots of experience of using them.You will learn to create a number of powerful JavaScript controls that can be used straightaway in your own applications. Besides giving you a deep understanding of the YUI library, this book will expand your knowledge of object-oriented JavaScript programming, as well as strengthen your understanding of the DOM and CSS. The final chapter describes many of the tools available to assist you the developer in debugging, maintaining, and ensuring the best quality in your code. In this new edition, all the examples have been updated to use the most recent coding practices and style and new ones added to cover newer components. Since the basic documentation for the library is available online, the focus is on providing insight and experience.The authors take the reader from beginner to advanced-level YUI usage and understanding.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
YUI 2.8 Learning the Library
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface

First base


Where the reset.css tool breaks down the default stylesheets of the different browsers, the base.css tool then builds upon this level foundation to provide basic styling across a range of commonly used elements.

There are certain elements on your page that just should be styled differently from other elements. Heading text for example, simply should stand out from body text; that's the whole point of heading text in the first place.

So the Base CSS Tool reintroduces some of the presentational styles of the common elements that the Reset CSS Tool neutralizes, but it does so in a way that is consistent across browsers. Italics and boldface are restored to those elements where you would expect them.

Headings are all made bold and given increasing sizes that can be rendered reliably in all browsers. Those sizes are expressed in relative (percentage) units so the headings will scale correctly if the user zooms in. Space is provided both above and below each heading and also after paragraphs...