lecture 8: going further

If you want to learn more about JavaScript start by having a look at the scripts on the JavaScript source. They're often surprisingly straightforward - for example, the "colour picker" two slides ago is really just one instruction. You can use them to give you an idea of how to build up an object from various components that deal with background colours, the source of images, what goes into forms, and so on; also how to manipulate the size of windows, where things are located on the screen and many other things. From this you might start guessing how to do other things I have not shown you, or combine two or more pre-written scripts into your own concoction. Play around with it!

If you want a reference manual for JavaScript then, as is often the case, O'Reilly's book is one of the best: JavaScript, the definitive guide, by David Flanagan, the 4th edition of which is the most recent. It's relatively expensive, but probably worth it for the serious web designer (invest in this rather than the same company's "Pocket Guide to JavaScript" which is even worse value).

Other web programming languages such as Java, PHP, SQL are other ways to begin including genuine interactivity on your page and/or to have pages which vary their content depending on the user inputs or other such variables. Again, these are all beyond the scope of this course although the next lecture will also provide you with some starting points. See the concluding slide.