Internet & World Wide Web How to Program (1st Edition) - Softcover

Harvey M. Deitel; Paul J. Deitel; T. R. Nieto

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130161438 ISBN 13: 9780130161437

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1999

Synopsis

Explains how to program multitiered, client/ server, database-intensive, Web applications. Key topics include client-side and server-side scripting objects, HTML, JavaScript, ActiveX controls and graphics, and Audio, video, speech. Softcover. CD-ROM included.

About this title

Review:

A solid jack-of-all-trades reference, this book-and-browser package comes straight from the school of college textbooks--and your outlook will determine whether it's for you. If you find helpful the terse writing, heavy reliance on spot illustrations, and strict end-of-chapter exercises that characterize textbooks, this package will be invaluable to you--it provides a lot of content, and is a perfect set for the corporate trainer or teacher. But, if you're looking for a chatty style, in-depth coverage on specific topics, or lots of asides on how things work in the real world, you might want to look elsewhere.

The book itself proceeds in a very linear fashion, and evidently has been written in a course style--starting with the basics, and each chapter building on the last. In this, it works nicely. It starts off with simple HTML and table structures, and moves into the simplest of scripting languages (JavaScript, natch)--spending five chapters and various exercises to teach the reader the basics of programming and programming techniques. Variables, arrays, input methodologies, functions, and simple object-oriented concepts all are covered clearly and concisely in various small programs. After JavaScript has been explained thoroughly, the book moves on to the more global performance-enhancing suite of using "Dynamic HTML"; then, it covers multimedia, and ends up on the heavy-hitting topics of client-side scripting, databases, and e-commerce. When you finish, you'll have under your belt an industrial-strength overview and understanding of Web programming issues.

Every chapter has the same strength and weakness; each subtopic is covered meticulously with a brief, well-written exercise--but only one. If that particular exercise doesn't make it clear to you (because the book uses each chapter as a stepping stone to a more advanced topic), you could misunderstand large sections of the rest of the book--rather like missing a class in the middle of a calculus course. Thankfully, Deitel's eye for solid examples and good writing keeps the danger of this disaster to a minimum, but the singleton nature of the samples means that you might have to do a lot of outside exercises for maximum reinforcement and retention.

There are other subtle difficulties, too. For one thing, the book has in-depth coverage of Microsoft Visual InterDev in a chapter, but does not provide a trial copy of InterDev--mentioning, in an embarrassed side note, that InterDev only comes with the classroom edition. The end-of-chapter exercises are left without answers--obviously to be given later in the instructor's manual, and leaving you to research whether you were right or not. Above all, this book definitely is aimed at the programmer, and not the designer or global Web master. Scant coverage is given to such critical design-worthy topics as page size, differences between GIF and JPEG, differences in browser interpretation, and advanced use of tables to provide complex graphical interfaces. If you want extremely functional pages, this is the place to go--but you'll need another book to help you design beautiful and quick-loading pages.

The CD-ROM is somewhat disappointing; it's mostly an expanded version of the book, transported to HTML format. You'll find code samples, which are always helpful, but no examples of live Web pages that have the code already programmed in. The questions in the end-of-chapter live examinations are ridiculously easy ("Primary key fields may not contain duplicate values: T/F"). There's a lot of content here, and this CD-ROM would be ideal for business and mass-training purposes--where an easily portable and wide-ranging format is necessary--but it might be a bit of a disappointment for the individual user.

In short, this is a fine package for trainers, teachers, and individuals who like classroom learning. It presents the core topics well, will give you a deep understanding of the issues, and is as comprehensive a book as you could hope for--given that it covers such an incredibly wide range of topics. --William Steinmetz

From the Inside Flap:

Preface

Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.
—Edward Morgan Forster

Welcome to the exciting world of Internet and World Wide Web programming. This book is by an old guy and two young guys. The old guy (HMD; Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1967) has been programming and/or teaching programming for 38 years. The two young guys (PJD; MIT 1991 and TRN; MIT 1992) have each been programming and/or teaching programming for 18 years. The old guy programs and teaches from experience; the young guys do so from an inexhaustible reserve of energy. The old guy wants clarity; the young guys want performance. The old guy seeks elegance and beauty; the young guys want results. We got together to produce a book we hope you will find informative, challenging and entertaining.

The Internet and the World Wide Web are evolving rapidly, if not explosively. This creates tremendous challenges for us as authors, for our publisher — Prentice Hall, for instructors, and for students and professional people.

The World Wide Web now increases the prominence of the Internet in information systems, strategic planning and implementation. Organizations want to integrate the Internet "seamlessly" into their information systems. Why We Wrote Internet and World Wide Web How to Program

Dr. Harvey M. Deitel taught introductory programming courses in universities for 20 years with an emphasis on developing clearly written, well-designed programs. Much of what is taught in these courses is the basic principles of programming with an emphasis on the effective use of control structures and functionalization. We present these topics in Internet and World Wide Web How to Program exactly the way HMD has done in his university courses. Our experience has been that students handle the material in the early chapters on control structures and functions in about the same manner as they handle introductory Pascal or C courses. There is one noticeable difference though: students are highly motivated by the fact that they are learning three leading-edge scripting languages (JavaScript, VBScript and Perl) and a leading-edge programming paradigm (object-based programming) that will be immediately useful to them as they leave the university environment for a world in which the Internet and the World Wide Web have a massive new prominence.

Our goal was clear: to produce a textbook for introductory university-level courses in computer programming for students with little or no programming experience while offering the depth and the rigorous treatment of theory and practice demanded by traditional, upper-level programming courses and satisfying professionals' needs. To meet this goal, we produced a comprehensive book that patiently teaches the principles of control structures, object-based programming and various markup languages (HTML, Dynamic HTML and XML) and scripting languages (JavaScript, VBScript and Perl). After mastering the material in this book, students will be well prepared to take advantage of the Internet and the Web as they take upper-level programming courses and enter industry.

Internet and World Wide Web How to Program is the fifth book in the Deitel/Prentice Hall How to Program series. It is distinguished by its focus on Web-based application development (emphasized in our server-side treatment). We wrote it fresh on the heels of Java How to Program: Third Edition.

We have emphasized color throughout the book. Almost from the start, the World Wide Web has been a colorful, multimedia-intensive medium. It appeals to both our visual and auditory senses. Someday it may even appeal to our senses of touch, taste and smell as well! We suggested to our publisher, Prentice Hall, that they should publish this book in color. The use of color in this book is crucial to understanding and appreciating scores of the book's programs. We hope it helps you develop more appealing Web-based applications.

Many books about the Web concentrate on developing attractive Web pages. We certainly discuss that subject intensely. However, the key focus of this book is really Web-based applications development. Our audiences want to build real-world, industrial-strength, Web-based applications. These audiences care about good looking Web pages. But they also care about client/server systems, databases, distributed computing, etc.

Many books about the Web are reference manuals with exhaustive listings of features. That is not our style. We concentrate on creating real applications. We provide the live-code examples on the CD accompanying this book so that you can run the applications, and see and hear for yourself the multimedia outputs. You can interact with our game programs and art programs.

The Web is an artist's paradise. Your creativity is your only limitation. But the Web contains so many tools and mechanisms to leverage your abilities that even if you are not artistically inclined, you can still create stunning outputs. Our goal is to help you master these tools and mechanisms so that you can maximize your creativity and development abilities. Not only will the Web help you increase your productivity, but it will also open up to you whole new areas of expertise that you never thought you had.

We are excited about the enormous range of possibilities the Internet and the Web offer. We have worked hard to create hundreds of useful live-code examples to help you master Internet and Web programming quickly and effectively. All of the code examples are on the accompanying disk and are available for free download from our Web site:

deitel/

Dynamic HTML is a means of adding "dynamic content" to World-Wide-Web pages. Instead of Web pages with only text and static graphics, Web pages "come alive" with audios, videos, animations, interactivity, and three-dimensional imaging. Dynamic HTML's features are precisely what businesses and organizations need to meet today's information processing requirements. So we immediately viewed Dynamic HTML as having the potential to become one of the world's key general-purpose programming languages.

People want to communicate. People need to communicate. Sure, they have been communicating since the dawn of civilization, but computer communications have been mostly limited to digits, alphabetic characters and special characters. The next major wave in communications is surely multimedia. People want to transmit pictures and they want those pictures to be in color. They want to transmit voices, sounds and audio clips. They want to transmit full-motion color video. And at some point, they will insist on three-dimensional, moving-image transmission. Our current flat, two-dimensional televisions will eventually be replaced with three-dimensional versions that turn our living rooms into "theaters-in-the-round." Actors will perform their roles as if we were watching live theater. Our living rooms will be turned into miniature sports stadiums. Our business offices will enable video conferencing among colleagues half a world apart as if they were sitting around one conference table. The possibilities are intriguing and the Internet is sure to play a key role in making many of these possibilities become reality.

There have been predictions that the Internet will eventually replace the telephone system. Why stop there? It could also replace radio and television as we know them today. It's not hard to imagine the Internet and the World Wide Web replacing the newspaper with completely electronic news media. Many newspapers and magazines already offer Web-based versions, some fee based and some free. Increased bandwidth is making it possible to stream audio and video over the Web. Companies and even individuals already run their own Web-based radio and television stations. Just a few decades ago, there were only a few television stations. Today, standard cable boxes accommodate about 100 stations. In a few more years, we will have access to thousands of stations broadcasting over the Web worldwide. This textbook you are reading may someday appear in a museum alongside radios, TVs and newspapers in an "early media of ancient civilization" exhibit.

One exciting possibility is that people with disabilities will be able to take advantage of computing and communications through the Internet and especially through the Web. In this regard, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is pursuing its Web Accessibility Initiative. Information about the Web Accessibility Initiative is available at

w3/WAI/

The goal of the WAI is to transform the Web into a medium in which all people, are able to access and use the technology and information available. Teaching Approach

Internet and World Wide Web How to Program contains a rich collection of examples, exercises, and projects drawn from many fields to provide the student with a chance to solve interesting real-world problems. The book concentrates on the principles of good software engineering and stresses program clarity. We avoid arcane terminology and syntax specifications in favor of teaching by example. The book is written by educators who spend most of their time teaching edge-of-the-practice topics in industry classrooms worldwide. The text emphasizes good pedagogy.

Live-Code Teaching Approach

The book is loaded with hundreds of live-code examples. This is the focus of the way we teach and write about programming, and the focus of each of our multimedia Cyber Classrooms as well. Each new concept is presented in the context of a complete, working program immediately followed by one or more windows showing the program's input/output dialog. We call this style of teaching and writing our live-code approach. We use the language to teach the language. Reading these programs is much like entering and running them on a computer.

Internet and World Wide Web How to Program "jumps right in" with HTML programming from Chapter 3, then rapidly proceeds with programming in JavaScript, Microsoft's Dynamic HTML, VBScript, Perl and XML. Students really want to "cut to the chase." There is great stuff to be done in all these languages so let's get right to it! Web programming is not trivial by any means, but it's fun and students can see immediate results. Students can get graphical, animated, multimedia-based, audio-intensive, database-intensive, network-based programs running quickly through "reusable components." They can implement impressive projects. They can be much more creative and productive in a one- or two-semester course than is possible in introductory courses taught in conventional programming languages such as C, C++, Visual Basic and Java. World Wide Web Access

All of the code for Internet and World Wide Web How to Program (and our other publications) is on the Internet free for download at the Deitel & Associates, Inc. Web site

deitel/

Please download all the code then run each program as you read the text. Make changes to the code examples and immediately see the effects of those changes. It's a great way to learn programming by doing programming. Note: You must respect the fact that this is copyrighted material. Feel free to use it as you study, but you may not republish any portion of it in any form without explicit permission from Prentice Hall and the authors. Objectives

Each chapter begins with a statement of Objectives. This tells the student what to expect and gives the student an opportunity, after reading the chapter, to determine if he or she has met these objectives. It is a confidence builder and a source of positive reinforcement.

Quotations

The learning objectives are followed by quotations. Some are humorous, some are philosophical, and some offer interesting insights. Our students enjoy relating the quotations to the chapter material. Many of the quotations are worth a "second look" after you read each chapter. Outline

The chapter Outline helps the student approach the material in top-down fashion. This, too, helps students anticipate what is to come and set a comfortable and effective learning pace.

10,889 Lines of Code in 202 Example Programs (with Program Outputs)

We present features in the context of complete, working programs. This is the focus of our teaching and our writing. We call it our "live-code" approach. Each program is followed by the outputs produced when the document is rendered and its scripts are executed. This enables the student to confirm that the programs run as expected. Reading the book carefully is much like entering and running these programs on a computer. The programs range from just a few lines of code to substantial examples with several hundred lines of code. Students should download all the code for the book from our Web site and run each program while studying that program in the text. The programs are available at deitel/ 499 Illustrations/Figures

An abundance of charts, line drawings and program outputs is included. The discussion of control structures, for example, features carefully drawn flowcharts. Note: We do not teach flowcharting as a program development tool, but we do use a brief, flowchart-oriented presentation to specify the precise operation of JavaScript's control structures. 367 Programming Tips

We have included programming tips to help students focus on important aspects of program development. We highlight hundreds of these tips in the form of Good Programming Practices, Common Programming Errors, Testing and Debugging Tips, Performance Tips, Portability Tips, Software Engineering Observations and Look-and-Feel Observations. These tips and practices represent the best we have gleaned from a combined seven decades of programming and teaching experience. One of our students — a mathematics major — told us that she feels this approach is like the highlighting of axioms, theorems, and corollaries in mathematics books; it provides a foundation on which to build good software.

77 Good Programming Practices

When we teach introductory courses, we state that the "buzzword" of each course is "clarity," and we highlight as Good Programming Practices techniques for writing programs that are clearer, more understandable, more debuggable, and more maintainable.

95 Common Programming Errors

Students learning a language tend to make certain errors frequently. Focusing the students' attention on these Common Programming Errors helps students avoid making the same errors. It also helps reduce the long lines outside instructors' offices during office hours!

30 Testing and Debugging Tips

When we first designed this "tip type," we thought we would use it strictly to describe how to test and debug programs. In fact, many of the tips simply describe aspects of markup languages and scripting languages that reduce the likelihood of introducing "bugs" in the first place and thus simplify the testing and debugging process for programs.

36 Performance Tips

In our experience, teaching students to write clear and understandable programs is by far the most important goal for a first programming course. But students want to write the programs that run the fastest, use the least memory, require the smallest number of keystrokes, or...

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0130161438
• ISBN 13: 9780130161437
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1157