Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours

Hour 15. Unobtrusive Scripting

What You'll Learn in This Hour: Best practices for creating unobtrusive scripts Separating content, presentation, and behavior Following web standards to create cross-browser scripts Reading and displaying browser information Using feature sensing to avoid errors Supporting non-JavaScript browsers

You have now learned enough JavaScript to create some complex effectsand potentially to create some complex problems. In Part IV, you will learn about some of JavaScript's more advanced features, and learn how to avoid problems as you progress to longer and more complicated scripts.

In this hour, you'll learn some guidelines for creating scripts and pages that are easy to maintain, easy to use, and follow web standards. This is known as unobtrusive scripting: Scripts add features without getting in the way of the user, the developer maintaining the code, or the designer building the layout of the site. You'll also learn how to make sure your scripts will work in multiple browsers, and won't stop working when a new browser comes along.