We just finished the last of the quality control checks on the JavaScript Cookbook, and it is now on its way to the printers. The Table of Contents should be showing soon at the O’Reilly book web site, but I’ll give you a taste of what I covered:
- The usual suspects, such as String, Date, Math, Function, and so on
- Creating JavaScript objects, including the new ECMAScript 5 object methods
- The new HTML5 and WebApps 1.0 material, including drag and drop, worker threads, postMessage, and the local storage options
- Debugging JavaScript, working with a library framework, such as jQuery, and packaging your libraries for reuse
- Working with media and graphics options, such as SVG, Canvas, and the new audio and video elements
- Complex performance functionality, such as currying and memoization
- JavaScript out of the box, including working with desktop-like applications using client-side file access
- Working with interesting data formats, such as RDFa, microformats, even ePub
- Ajax, including working with XML and JSON formatted data
- Debugging and using JavaScript test tools
- Working with ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and creating accessible dynamic applications
I devoted one chapter to ARIA and integrating accessibility into dynamic solutions. Because we now have access to an open source and freely available screen reader (NVDA), we can easily test our use of ARIA for dynamic applications. In addition, most framework libraries now incorporate ARIA support, so we need to understand how to use this rich and simple-to-use accessibility enabler.
I also covered ARIA because of my interest in semantic web technologies: ARIA is way of recording rendering semantics, which opens the door for interesting possibilities.
The JavaScript Cookbook should be in the stores in less than a month, and is available for pre-order. It’s a largish book—21 chapters and 530+ pages. The format is cookbook style, where I provide “recipes” in a Problem/Solution/Discussion format. All the code bits are included in example files, so you can play along, as you read.
One thing this book does not provide is support for IE6. Now that major sites and companies are no longer providing support for IE6, it’s time to stop wasting book space on an insecure, broken, and badly outdated browser.