Core Web Programming (Core Series) - Softcover

1962 Hall, Marty

3.73

11 ratings by Goodreads

9780136256663: Core Web Programming (Core Series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 013625666X ISBN 13: 9780136256663

Publisher: Lebanon, Indiana, U.S.A.: Prentice Hall Ptr, 1997

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A comprehensive Web programming resource aimed at the serious developer or upper-level student. Reflects plenty of real-world experience and pointers to key pitfalls and bugs in the major implementations. Four main topics are covered:

HTML: Complete coverage of the HTML 3.2 spec, major Netscape and Internet Explorer extensions, frames, cascading style sheets, dynamic/layered HTML via either extended style sheets or the LAYER and ILAYER elements.

Java: Java 1.1 and 1.0. Detailed coverage of the 1.1 event model. Exhaustive coverage of *every* AWT component. Basic syntax, OOP intro, threads, sockets, RMI, JDBC, serialization, inner classes, double buffering, etc. Hundreds of examples.

CGI Programming: The HTTP specification (request methods, request headers, response status line, response headers, cookies). The client side (HTML forms, sending GET and POST data from applets). The server side (CGI environment variables, writing CGI programs in Java, a CGI form parser and cookie value parser in java, the servlet API, CGI alternatives). An overview of public-key cryptography.

JavaScript: JavaScript 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. Writing cross-platform scripts. Customizing pages. Manipulating layers. Validating CGI forms. Animating images. Handling events. Regular expressions. Complete quick reference to all of JavaScript 1.2.

The text presents over 200 HTML and JavaScript documents, and more than 250 Java classes, which are also available on the book's CD-ROM.

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Review:

Becoming a Web developer these days requires expertise in a variety of disparate languages and tools and usually requires a whole shelf of books. Core Web Programming delivers all you need to become a competent Web developer in one massive text. It covers HTML, Java, Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and JavaScript thoroughly with plenty of real-world programming examples.

The first part of the book covers HTML 3.2, including the basic tags and more advanced topics such as frames and cascading style sheets. This section discusses Netscape and Microsoft extensions to HTML (such as using plug-ins for playing multimedia content and ActiveX controls). The tutorial to HTML is comparable to those in other books of this category and includes some of the author's tips for creating more portable HTML.

The next section covers the basics of Java from a programmer's standpoint, including the advantages of Java and how to access Java documentation and tools. The tutorial that follows stresses the built-in libraries in core Java, covering drawing images and other graphics capabilities. Event handling in Java Developer's Kit (JDK) 1.02 (probably unnecessary these days) and JDK 1.1 receive full treatment. The chapter on graphics double-buffering for smooth animation within Java programs is particularly useful, and the author's treatment of how to access the network capabilities of Java is perhaps unmatched. (Topics here include how to load URLs using Java's network classes and even how to create a simple HTTP server in Java.)

The third section of this text moves to CGI programming using Java on the server. The author introduces the basics of HTTP and describes how data are passed to CGI programs from the client. Though this section lacks a discussion of Perl (which is still the preferred language for CGI development), the treatment of CGI fundamentals and the basics of Java servlets is good. (Java servlets are an alternative--with some advantages--to Perl.)

The fourth and final section of the book returns to the client side once more, with a tutorial on JavaScript, the scripting language for Netscape browsers. Topics such as how to use cookies to store information on local machines and how to validate arguments for CGI forms help round out a successful tour of the technologies that developers need to program on the Web.

From the Inside Flap:

In late 1995, I proposed a new course for the Johns Hopkins University's part-time graduate program in Computer Science, for which I had been teaching part-time for a number of years. My idea was to bring together the major Web-related topics in a single course dubbed “Distributed Development on the World Wide Web,” with Java as a unifying theme. We'd look at HTML, Java, HTTP, CGI Programming, and JavaScript, with lots of hands-on projects and no exams. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. By the time I taught the first section in the summer of 1996, the Java tidal wave had swept through the university and the employers that the students represented. The class filled shortly after enrollment opened. There were more students on the waiting list than in the course. I got frantic phone calls from students insisting that they absolutely had to be in the course. Several local companies called asking for on-site courses. What fun! I even found myself switching to Java for the majority of the software development in my “real” job.
However, when I went shopping for texts over the next semester or two, I got a rude surprise. Despite the availability of good books in most of the areas I wanted to cover, I found that I needed three, four, or even five separate books to get good coverage of the material I wanted for the course. Similarly, for my day job, I was constantly switching back and forth among the best of the huge stack of books I had accumulated and the various on-line references. Surely there was a better way. Shouldn't it be possible to fit 95 percent of what professional programmers use in about 35 percent of the space, and get it all in one book? Well, about that time I struck up an acquaintance with Gary Cornell, author of Core Java, and he suggested that I use my class notes as the outline for a World Wide Web developer's reference, and that I entitle it Core Web Programming. Well, after a new version of Java, two new versions of JavaScript, several new browser releases, and a year or two of full-time Web development and Java hacking, here it is. I hope you find it useful.

Real Code for Real Programmers

This book is aimed at serious software developers. If you are looking for a book that shows you how to use a browser, lists the current hottest Web sites, and pontificates about how Java will break the Microsoft monopoly, you've come to the wrong place. If you're already a programmer of some sort and want to get started with HTML, Java, CGI, and JavaScript as quickly as possible, this is the book for you. I'll illustrate the most important approaches and warn you of the most common pitfalls. In order to do so, I will include plenty of working code: over 250 complete Java classes, for instance. I've tried to give detailed examples of the most important and frequently used features, summarize the lesser used ones, and refer you to the API (available on-line) for a few of the rarely used ones.

A word of caution, however. Nobody becomes a great developer just by reading. You have to write some real code too. The more, the better. In each chapter, I suggest that you start by making a simple program or a small variation of one of the examples given, then strike off on your own with a more significant project. Skim the sections you don't plan on using right away, then come back when you are ready to try them out. If you do this, you should quickly develop the confidence to handle the real-world problems that brought you here in the first place. You should be able to balance the demand for the latest features in Web pages with the need for multi-platform support. You should be comfortable with frames, style sheets, and layered HTML. You should have no qualms about making Web interfaces to your corporate database, either via CGI or through JDBC. You should be able to make portable stand-alone graphical applications in Java 1.0 or 1.1. You should be able to connect these applications to remote systems over the network. You should be able to easily distribute computation among multiple threads, or even spin it off to separate systems using RMI. You should be able to use JavaScript to validate CGI forms or to animate Web pages, while still supporting older browsers. You should get a raise.

How This Book Is Organized

The book is divided into four parts, as follows:
Part I: The HyperText Markup Language
Web pages are created using HTML, the HyperText Markup Language. HTML lets you mix regular text with special tags that describe the content, layout, or appearance of the text. These tags are then used by Web browsers like Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer to format the page. This first part of the book will cover the following topics in HTML:

HTML 3.2. Full coverage of all the elements in the latest official HTML standard. Hypertext links, fonts, images, tables, client-side image maps, and more.

Major Netscape and Internet Explorer extensions. Forwarding pages, using custom colors and font faces, embedding audio, video, and ActiveX components. Knowing when extensions make your pages non-portable.

Frames. Dividing the screen into rectangular regions, each associated with a separate HTML document. Borderless frames. Floating frames. Targeting frame cells from hypertext links. Solving common frame problems.

Cascading Style Sheets. Level one style sheets for customizing fonts, colors, images, text formatting, indentation, lists, and more.

Layers. Using extended style sheets or the LAYER and ILAYER elements for dynamic, layered HTML.
Part II: Java
Java is a powerful general-purpose programming language that can be used to create stand-alone programs as well as ones that are embedded in Web pages. Java topics that are covered include:

Unique features of Java. What's different about Java? The truth about Java myths and hype.

Object-oriented programming in Java. Variables, methods, constructors, overloading, and interfaces. Modifiers in class declarations. Packages and the CLASSPATH.

Java syntax. Primitive types, operators, strings, vectors, arrays, input/output and the Math class.

Graphics. Applets. Applications. Drawing, color, font, and clipping area operations. Loading and drawing images.

Mouse and keyboard events. Processing events in Java 1.02. Handling them in Java 1.1. Event types, event listeners, and low-level event handlers. Inner classes.

Windows. Canvas, Panel, Applet, ScrollPane, Frame, Dialog, FileDialog, and Window. Component and Container. Lightweight components and containers in Java 1.1. Saving and loading windows using object serialization.

Layout Managers. FlowLayout, BorderLayout, GridLayout, CardLayout, and GridBagLayout. Positioning components by hand. Strategies for using layout managers effectively. Writing your own layout manager.

GUI Controls. Buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, list boxes, textfields, text areas, labels, scrollbars, and popup menus. Creating slider and image button classes.

Threads. Threads in separate or existing objects. Synchronizing access to shared resources. Grouping threads. Multi-threaded graphics and double buffering.

Client-server programming. Clients and servers using sockets. The URL class. An HTTP client and server. Remote Method Invocation (RMI). Java DataBase Connectivity (JDBC).
Part III: CGI Programming
Web pages can be connected to databases and other programs on the server by means of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Part III covers the following CGI areas:

HTTP. Request types. Request headers. Response headers. Cookies. Public-key cryptography.

The client side. HTML forms and form elements. Using applets to talk to CGI programs. Sending via GET and POST. Bypassing the HTTP server and talking directly to programs from applets.

The server side. Reading GET and POST data. CGI environment variables. Manipulating cookies. Java classes to decode and parse CGI data. Server-side Java and the servlet API. CGI alternatives.
Part IV: JavaScript
JavaScript is a scripting language that can be embedded in Web pages and interpreted as the pages are loaded. The final part will cover the following topics in JavaScript:

JavaScript syntax. Fields, methods, functions, strings, objects, arrays, and regular expressions.

Customizing Web pages. Adapting to different browsers, JavaScript releases, and screen sizes.

Making pages dynamic. Animating images. Manipulating layers. Responding to user events.

Validating CGI forms. Checking form entries as they are changed. Checking data when form is submitted.

Handling cookies. Reading and setting values. The Cookie object.

Controlling frames. Sending results to specific frames. Preventing documents from being framed. Updating multiple frame cells. Giving frame cells the focus automatically.

Integrating Java and JavaScript. LiveConnect and the JSObject class.

JavaScript quick reference. Major classes i

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