CGI Manual of Style Online

by Robert McDaniel

Welcome to the HTML version of the book CGI Manual of Style, by Robert McDaniel. To get started right away, use the link below to the Table of Contents. From this page you can link to any chapter as well as to the Quick Reference section. We've also included some script files from the book. Download CGIMOS.ZIP, this zip file contains a dozen or so scripts. Please use a utility that allows long file names when decompressing this file.

The Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, is a standard for communication between Web documents and CGI scripts you write. CGI scripting, or programming, is the act of creating a program that adheres to this standard of communication. A CGI script is simply a program that in some way communicates with your Web documents. Web documents are any kind of file used on the Web. They can be HTML documents, text files, image files, or any number of other file formats. The existence of this gateway between programs you write and your Web documents allows you to create much more dynamic and interactive Web pages than you could with HTML alone.

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CGI Developer's Guide

by Eugene Eric Kim
I wrote this book for the enthusiastic and the curious. You do not have to be an expert computer scientist or programmer to learn and master CGI programming. However, you must know at least one programming language and should have some basic programming experience. Your ability as a CGI programmer reduces to your ability as a programmer in general. After you learn the basic concepts and begin programming, you will rapidly gain the necessary knowledge and instincts to write effective applications.
Although the concepts in this book apply to any programming language, the examples are limited to C and Perl. C and Perl are two very popular CGI programming languages with different things to offer. It is useful to look at both C and Perl examples for similar tasks in order to understand some of the subtle distinctions between the different languages.
Most of the examples use the cgihtml library for C programs and cgi-lib.pl for Perl. My Perl examples are written in Perl 4. I chose not to use Perl 5 because proper Perl 5 programming requires some understanding of object-oriented programming and other advanced features. Instead of distracting you with the nuances of Perl 5, I decided to use Perl 4 examples (which are compatible with the Perl 5 interpreter). If you know and are familiar with Perl 5, I highly recommend you look at Lincoln Stein's CGI.pm module, an excellent programming library for CGI applications. This and other libraries are included on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.
Although knowing at least one programming language (preferably either C or Perl) is required, sometimes books like this are useful tools for learning how to program in a language. You should not use this book as a beginner's guide to C or Perl, but I hope your programming skills in either language are strengthened by going through the examples and applying some of the concepts on your own.
Finally, this book is centered largely around UNIX, although again, most of the concepts and code are portable to all platforms. I have tried to keep as many examples as possible fairly general so that they apply to all platforms. Some of the more advanced topics and examples required a focus on at least one platform. In these cases, my discussion is based on the UNIX environment. On other, rarer occasions, I also include more advanced information on both the Windows and Macintosh environments. I include some references to more information regarding these other platforms in the reference section at the end of this book.
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Special Edition Using HTML 4

Macmillan Computer Publishing
What Is HTML?
You can't build a monument without bricks, and you can't make bricks without straw--everyone who has seen the film The Ten Commandments knows that. Likewise, if you plan to establish your own monumental presence on the World Wide Web, you have to start with the straw--HTML.
The World Wide Web is built of Web pages, and those pages are themselves created with HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. Though many folks talk about HTML Programming with a capital P (particularly recruiters), HTML is really not a programming language at all. HTML is exactly what it claims to be: a markup language. You use HTML to mark up a text document, just as you would if you were an editor using a red pencil. The marks you use indicate which format (or style) should be used when displaying the marked text.
If you have ever used an old word processing program (remember WordStar?), you already know how a markup language works. In these old programs, if you wanted text to appear italicized, you surrounded it with control characters. For example, you might surround a phrase with control characters that make it appear as bold text:
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Special Edition USING HTML Second Edition

by Tom Savola, Mark Brown, John Jung, Bill Brandon, Robert Meegan, Kenneth Murphy,
Jim O'Donnell, and Stephen R. Pietrowicz

HTML: The Bricks and Mortar of the Web

Now that you know where the Web came from, it's time to jump into the whole melange feet first-but with your eyes open. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is what you use to create Web pages, and it's the topic of this book.
HTML is relatively simple in both concept and execution. In fact, if you have ever used a very old word processor, you are already familiar with the concept of a markup language.
In the "good old days" of word processing, if you wanted text to appear in, say, italics, you might surround it with control characters like this:
/Ithis is in italics/I
The "/I" at the beginning would indicate to the word processor that, when printed, the text following should be italicized. The "/I" would turn off italics so that any text afterward would be printed in a normal font. You literally marked up the text for printing just as you would if you were making editing marks on a printed copy with an editor's red pencil.
HTML works in much the same way. If, for example, you want text to appear on a Web page in italics, you mark it like this:
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HTML By Example

by Todd Stauffer
What's the by Example Advantage?
There are two major reasons why learning HTML is easier when it's by Example. First, HTML isn't a typical programming language-in fact, it isn't a programming language at all. It's a "mark-up" language that builds on very basic concepts that are all somewhat related to one another. Learning by example, then, allows you to start with the initial concepts and learn to build to make complex Web pages come to life easily.
Second, with the included CD-ROM, HTML by Example gives you a major headstart in Web creation. Why? Because if you see an example that's similar to what you want to create, just copy the example from the CD and alter it to suit your needs. It's possible to have a Web page created within minutes of finding a suitable example! Just copy and paste.
Who Should Use This Book?
Before you get to the point of actually creating HTML documents (Web pages), you'll go through a little refresher course on the Internet and the World Wide Web. So, even if you're not terribly familiar with the Web, I'll try to get you there before throwing any strange codes or address at you.
Essentially, all you need to use this book is a rudimentary grasp of the Internet and Web, and a desire to create your own presence. If you've just "heard" of the Web, or even if you've been surfing for a while and want to know more about Web page creation, you've found the right book.
Programmers and graphic artists will also find this book useful for making the transition to the Web-although I should make the point that Web design is not in any way as complicated or cerebral as programming. For the basics (and even for the best looking Web pages), no programming expertise is required. Later in this book, you'll learn how to make your pages "cutting-edge" with emerging tools like JavaScript. But even for that, programming is not a prerequisite.
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HTML 3.2 and CGI Professional Reference Edition UNLEASHED

By John December and Mark Ginsburg
The State of the World Wide Web
It's the late 1990s, and the World Wide Web is a more complex system for communication than when it was introduced almost a decade ago. Although technically still based on the system of hypertext that Tim Berners-Lee and others developed at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland in the late 1980s, the Web today is more diverse technologically and more diffused within society and culture.
The Technical Expansion of the Web
The range of technologies a Web developer can choose from is now more varied than ever. Besides an array of techniques and tools to shape meaning with HyperText Markup Language (HTML), developers also can use many technologies to add new kinds of multimedia and interactive content to on-line services. New kinds of software to observe Web content are being developed, and the competition for being the provider of Internet software has risen to the highest priority in the personal computer industry.
Whereas the view of the Web in 1989 was a text-based browser deployed on an internal network, today the Web is a global medium that encompasses many software and communications systems across many networks. Within just the years 1995-1996, new kinds of system s emerged that enabled new forms of communications over the Web.
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How to Use HTML 3.2

By Scott Arpajian And Robert Mullen
The World Wide Web is exploding all around us, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Chances are that if you've opened the book to this page, you're already familiar with the Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular. You've probably al-ready explored what the Web has to offer, and like millions of others, you've become hooked by its limitless information and exciting content. In fact, you've probably even thought about publishing your own home page on the Web.
Surprisingly, publishing on the Web is easy. The backbone of the World Wide Web is the Hypertext Markup Language, often simply re-ferred to as HTML. This is the language that is used to create Web pages, and it is the glue that holds all of the pieces of the Web together. Despite its power and flexibility, HTML is simple to understand and write. HTML is not complicated, and it doesn't require special compilers or tools. In fact, you can write HTML just as we did for this book-using the Windows Notepad.
How to Use HTML 3.2 is an illustrated tutorial that will teach you the fundamentals of HTML. It starts with the basics, and then moves on to the more advanced concepts. Along the way, you'll get the chance to practice your skills in a series of exercises known as Try-Its. By the time you complete this book, you'll be an accomplished HTML author. Even when you finish reading the book, you can continue to use it as a reference and guide as you publish your own documents on the Web.
The Web is an exciting medium, and it levels the playing field for electronic publishing. Anyone can publish on the Web. There are very few obstacles, and no special tools are required. All you need is a working knowledge of HTML, some disk space on a Web server, and a whole lot of ambition. This book will teach you everything you need to know about creating HTML content on the World Wide Web. The rest is up to you.
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Zen Garden -The Beauty of CSS Design

Littering a dark and dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific tags, incompatible DOMs, and broken CSS support.
Today, we must clear the mind of past practices. Web enlightenment has been achieved thanks to the tireless efforts of folk like the W3C, WaSP and the major browser creators.
The css Zen Garden invites you to relax and meditate on the important lessons of the masters. Begin to see with clarity. Learn to use the (yet to be) time-honored techniques in new and invigorating fashion. Become one with the web.
So What is This About?
There is clearly a need for CSS to be taken seriously by graphic artists. The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really.
CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document. The only way this can be illustrated in a way that gets people excited is by demonstrating what it can truly be, once the reins are placed in the hands of those able to create beauty from structure. To date, most examples of neat tricks and hacks have been demonstrated by structurists and coders. Designers have yet to make their mark. This needs to change.
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CSS 2.1 Specification

This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1). CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts, spacing, and aural cues) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS 2.1 simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance.
CSS 2.1 builds on CSS2 [CSS2] which builds on CSS1 [CSS1]. It supports media-specific style sheets so that authors may tailor the presentation of their documents to visual browsers, aural devices, printers, braille devices, handheld devices, etc. It also supports content positioning, table layout, features for internationalization and some properties related to user interface.
CSS 2.1 corrects a few errors in CSS2 (the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's "style" attribute and a new calculation of the 'clip' property). But most of all CSS 2.1 represents a "snapshot" of CSS usage: it consists of all CSS features that were implemented interoperably at the date of publication.
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Tableless layout HOWTO

It has been advocated many times that tables shouldn't be use in HTML for layout purposes. This page shows one way to create a 3 columns layout using CSS only.
HTML is a structural language, which means it is - or should be - used to add structure into a text through tags. The table tag should then only be used to format data into a table to relate columns with rows.
But since the apparition of tables in HTML, it has been very often used for layout purpose, usually split a web page into columns. Besides the fact that it breaks the meaning of HTML, it doesn't help either in various cases that we could summarize by the difficulty to parse or render a table in some context (disabilities, view port restrictions, ...).
This document describes one way to create a 3 columns layout and links to other layout techniques.
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Style Sheets

Style sheets represent a major breakthrough for Web page designers, expanding their ability to improve the appearance of their pages. In the scientific environments in which the Web was conceived, people are more concerned with the content of their documents than the presentation. As people from wider walks of life discovered the Web, the limitations of HTML became a source of continuing frustration and authors were forced to sidestep HTML's stylistic limitations. While the intentions have been good -- to improve the presentation of Web pages -- the techniques for doing so have had unfortunate side effects. These techniques work for some of the people, some of the time, but not for all of the people, all of the time. They include:
  • Using proprietary HTML extensions
  • Converting text into images
  • Using images for white space control
  • Use of tables for page layout
  • Writing a program instead of using HTML

These techniques considerably increase the complexity of Web pages, offer limited flexibility, suffer from interoperability problems, and create hardships for people with disabilities.

Click to Read More

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40 CSS Tutorial Reference

This tutorials and guides or ebook are for understanding and using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It also shows several method for implementing CSS. This reference make you clear how to code CSS and how to change different formats using CSS.
This all are free Cascading Style Sheet tutorials (CSS) tutorials or ebook from industry experts that feature extensive information on CSS basics, tags, programming, and scripts.

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CSS Attributes: Index -MSDN Library

This index lists all the supported Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attributes by category, and indicates in which version of Microsoft Internet Explorer they were first available.
Version Keys
(5) Attribute available as of Internet Explorer 5
(5.5) Attribute available as of Internet Explorer 5.5
(6) Attribute available as of Internet Explorer 6
(7) Attribute available as of Windows Internet Explorer 7
Note When an attribute has multiple version keys, later version keys indicate significant updates to the attribute.
Attributes that have been proposed to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) but are not part of any standard are marked with "." Microsoftextensions to the CSS standard are indicated with "."
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Introduction to CSS shorthand properties

Shorthand properties?
One of the many great possibilities in CSS is the use of shorthand properties. It lets you specify several properties by using only one. If you have started learning about CSS and started implementing it on your web pages, you'll immediately see the benefit of using shorthand CSS properties. It makes it even easier for you to apply style to your markup, and it will make your CSS code shorter.
For you to have any value of this article you need to know the normal CSS properties and their values, they will be used here, but not extensively explained.
Browser support as indicated for every shorthand property is vague and only gives a general idea of the browser compatibility. For more detailed information about the nature in which a property is buggy or partially supported, check the link to Webreview and Stylemaster at the end of this article.
Now let us have a quick look at a sample CSS rule to refresh our memory on the different parts of CSS and what they are called:
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Cascading Style Sheets

Style Sheets Now!
Change the appearance of hundreds of Web pages by changing just one file... Influence presentation without losing visitors... All with the power and flexibility of Web style sheets.
Quick Tutorial
A basic introduction to Cascading Style Sheets.
CSS Structure and Rules
An introduction to the various kinds of selectors, pseudo-classes, pseudo-elements, and cascading order.
CSS Properties
Descriptions of the various properties available in Cascading Style Sheets, level 1.
Linking Style Sheets to HTML
Various methods of incorporating style sheets into an HTML document.
Style Sheet Dependence
How to misuse style sheets and make your pages inaccessible.
CSSCheck
Check the syntax and style of your Cascading Style Sheets with this CSS lint.
CSS References
Links to CSS specifications and other documentation.
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CSS 2 Tutorial

By Miloslav Nic
In this tutorial CSS 2 stylesheets are applied on XML documents. The text is written in pure HTML and can be therefore displayed in any browser. Each example contains one or more xml sources which can be displayed (and formatted) with CSS when the link View output is clicked on.
You can start from the Example 1, from the Contents, which contains descriptions of individual examples, or from Index which lists all used properties in the stylesheets with links to individual examples.
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RichInStyle.com CSS2 tutorial

This is one of very few CSS2 tutorials on the net. Not only does it have that advantage, but also has the following advantages:
  • It is easy to understand
  • It covers every aspect of the specification, including those that are frequently not touched upon by other tutorials such as cascading, box width calculations, etc.
  • It presents information in an efficient manner - it is short, so you learn faster

Why style sheets?
Style sheets have the following advantages:

  • They separate content from formatting. This means that instead of marking a quotation as italic, you mark it as a quote and then tell the browser that you want all quotes to be italic. This means that it is a two-second job to change quotes to bold, red, green or normal.
  • They reduce download time by removing formatting information from documents. Thus instead of having to specify that you want Times New Roman a few dozen times in a file for headings, you specify once that you want headings to be Times New Roman. They also are advantageous in that they need only be downloaded once for an entire website.
  • They give far more control over formatting than HTML - such features as background images and colors on all elements - not just the whole document, etc.
  • They ensure a consistent appearance across a site

Click to Read More

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RichInStyle.com CSS1 tutorial

This is a CSS1 tutorial with a difference - unlike other tutorials, it has the following advantages:
It covers every aspect of the specification, including those that are frequently not touched upon by other tutorials such as cascading, box width calculations, etc.
It presents information in an efficient manner - it is short, so you learn faster.
What are style sheets
Style sheets provide a means for authors to specify how they wish documents written in a markup language such as XML or HTML to be formatted. For example, an author might wish to specify that a document should be green on pink - this could be done using CSS, an established standard for styling documents.
You might ask 'Why do we need style sheets - can't you use HTML; for example, the FONT element or the bgcolor attribute?'
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Style Master CSS Tutorial

This tutorial teaches CSS using both hand-coding and Style Master for Windows. You can also follow it using instructions for Style Master for Mac OS X. By working through the exercises you will learn all about CSS for text styling and page appearance including layout, and create a stylish looking page like this. If you want to learn CSS by hand-coding alone, simply work through all the exercises and code examples and skip all the specially styled Style Master instructions.
Style Master is a CSS editor which includes full support for hand-coding. It's a great way to start learning CSS: hand code when it suits, and fall back on the WYSIWYG editors when you're working with new properties and selectors. This tutorial is included as part of the 30 day demo download.
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Web Style Sheets CSS tips & tricks

A random collection of CSS examples and some help in using them.
  • Figures & captions
  • A pinned-down menu
  • Indented paragraphs
  • Alternative style sheets
  • A confetti menu
  • Getting rid of colored scrollbars (user style sheets)
  • Even/odd: coloring every other row
  • A tabbed interface
  • A chart comparing font styles
  • Horizontal and vertical centering
  • Boxes with drop shadows
  • Text shadows
  • Rounded boxes and unsharp shadows

Figures & captions

HTML doesn't have an element that allows to insert a figure with a caption. It was once proposed (see HTML3), but never made it into HTML4. Here is one way to simulate such a figure element:

Click to Read More

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CSS Quick Tutorials

If you already know what a style sheet is and how to link it to your page, and how to specify selectors, properties and units with CSS, then in some ways the rest is detail. But, there can be a lot of detail to learn. The following is our ongoing collection of tips, tricks and quick tutorials.
The rising tide
When I redesigned the Westciv site (some time ago now - how it flies!) I included a neat little effect on the top left corner logo which I like to call "The Rising Tide". Scroll up and down the page a bit now if you've never actually noticed it before.
(Not seeing anything in particular? I'm guessing you're using Internet Explorer on Windows. Because a vital aspect of CSS is not supported by this browser, the technique doesn't actually work here. However it does no harm either, so in the spirit of progressive enhancement I decided to use it anyway.)
I've always been surprised by the number of people who have written in asking how the effect on the logo works, and now I've finally got round to writing a little tutorial to spell it out. There are two parts to the technique. One is simply the scrolling effect, and the way the westciv logo can always be seen no matter how far you scroll down the page. And then there is the fact that this logo is a live link to the Westciv home page, available right there in the top left of the viewport, no matter how far down the page has been scrolled.
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CSS Online - Explore the World of CSS

CSS Online is an interactive guide to CSS. CSS Online will be updated to reflect the latest CSS standards. You can explore each page and experiment on-line by manipulating different CSS properties. See how to manipulate text, margins, borders, and much more.
Adminstrator's Note: This site is a great interactive online CSS tutor
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CSS-guide

By Tapio Markula
Hi. You arrived to my CSS-guide. I handle in my CSS-guide almost everything, which relates with CSS. CSS-pages have following page groups in the main menu:
  • General info - general info about the CSS-guide, how topic groups relate with each others, last changes, functionality of pages, used colors, special markups and links; includes also a FAQ-page, where I answer either real question, which I have got or imaginary questions, which somebody might ask for me
  • Index pages - many kinds of index pages, for example alphabetical index and table of contents (the site map of CSS-guide)
  • Guide pages - the most important CSS-pages, where I handle systematic CSS - the actual CSS-guide
  • Extra pages - a group of mixed pages, which somewhat relate with CSS
  • Proposals - some CSS-related proposals
  • Practice - practice tasks and example pages

I hope that you could find from my site what you are looking for and my site could give for you much pleasure!

Click to Read More

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CSS Frequently Asked Questions

By Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos
What is CSS?
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language which allows attaching style to HTML elements. Every element type as well as every occurance of a specific element within that type can be declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.
What are Style Sheets?
Style Sheets are templates, very similar to templates in desktop publishing applications, containing a collection of rules declared to various selectors (elements).
What is external Style Sheet? How to link?
External Style Sheet is a template/document/file containing style information which can be linked with any number of HTML documents. This is a very convenient way of formatting the entire site as well as restyling it by editing just one file.
The file is linked with HTML documents via the LINK element inside the HEAD element. Files containing style information must have extension .css, e.g. style.css.
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CSS Pointers Group's CSS Example

CSS Pointers Group provides various practical use examples of CSS. It includes -
  • Blockquote Usage
  • Border on BODY
  • CSS Columns
  • Deprecated examples
  • CSS Layers example
  • Drop Cap simulation
  • More Drop Cap simulations
  • Table example
  • Embedded CSS example
  • External CSS example
  • CSS Font Rules
  • CSS font-family
  • CSS font-size
  • CSS font-style
  • CSS font-variant
  • CSS font-weight (keyword)
  • CSS font-weight (numeric)
  • Table example (green bar paper)
  • CSS highlighting
  • Imported CSS example
  • Indenting with CSS
  • Inline CSS example
  • Text justification with CSS
  • List options with CSS
  • Pullquotes Examples
  • Shadowed text with CSS
  • Suppress Hypertext underlining
  • CSS table with named colors
  • Border workaround for Netscape

Click to Read More

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Introduction to CSS3

The members of the CSS&FP Working Group have decided to modularize the CSS specification. This modularization will help to clarify the relationships between the different parts of the specification, and reduce the size of the complete document. It will also allow us to build specific tests on a per module basis and will help implementors in deciding which portions of CSS to support. Furthermore, the modular nature of the specification will make it possible for individual modules to be updated as needed, thus allowing for a more flexible and timely evolution of the spcification as a whole.
This document lists all the modules to be contained in the future CSS3 specification.
This is an official introduction, issued by the CSS Working Group, which details the modularization of the CSS3 specification and the CSS test suite. This document should be considered to be informative, not normative. See the Style overview pages for more information on W3C's work on style sheets, including CSS.
This is a public W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. As a draft document, it may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress."
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Cascading Style Sheets, level 2

This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2). CSS2 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts, spacing, and aural cues) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS2 simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance.
CSS2 builds on CSS1 (see [CSS1]) and, with very few exceptions, all valid CSS1 style sheets are valid CSS2 style sheets. CSS2 supports media-specific style sheets so that authors may tailor the presentation of their documents to visual browsers, aural devices, printers, braille devices, handheld devices, etc. This specification also supports content positioning, downloadable fonts, table layout, features for internationalization, automatic counters and numbering, and some properties related to user interface.
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Cascading Style Sheets, level 1

This document specifies level 1 of the Cascading Style Sheet mechanism (CSS1). CSS1 is a simple style sheet mechanism that allows authors and readers to attach style (e.g. fonts, colors and spacing) to HTML documents. The CSS1 language is human readable and writable, and expresses style in common desktop publishing terminology.
One of the fundamental features of CSS is that style sheets cascade; authors can attach a preferred style sheet, while the reader may have a personal style sheet to adjust for human or technological handicaps. The rules for resolving conflicts between different style sheets are defined in this specification.
This Recommendation results from W3C activities in the area of Style Sheets.
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Comprehensive CSS Guide

by Marcus Kazmierzak
CSS are text files, or special text in a HTML file, which allows you to specify styles, formatting, and positioning of HTML objects.
What do you mean style?
Style is what gives an item its distinctive look or feel. For text it could be what font is used, what color, size, or spacing. It also applies to other HTML objects such as links, images, backgrounds, margins and borders.
How can I benefit by using CSS?
Some of the benefits to using CSS are more consistency, better layout and visual design, plus easier HTML coding. Also you can do things with style sheets that could never be done before.
  • consistency: This would apply for larger sites, and many different developers, which is the environment I am currently working in for the Department of Education. A site-global style sheet could be set up, which all pages would refer to. This sheet could include the look and feel you want for the complete site. Each page would maintain the same attributes throughout the site. The ability to change one item, on one page can change the same attribute on your whole site.
  • easier coding: No more elaborate tables, and complicated HTML. This will also greatly benefits the large multi-contributor web environments. The HTML code using style sheets is much simpler. The code reverts back to what it was in the early simple days. Just using header tags (H1, H2, ...), and paragraph tags with style sheets can produce a rich document, with the help of a SPAN and DIV tag here and there. (but that's getting ahead of myself)
  • rich design and layout: Cascading Style Sheets bring professional layout and design control to HTML documents. Here's a brief listing of what you can do with style sheets that you could only do with an elaborate work around, or not at all.
    (1) exact positioning of elements
    (2) font control (size, color, family)
    (3) white space control, margins, leading
    (4) background control (placement, repeat, ...)

Click to Read More

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Complete CSS Guide

By John Allsopp and Maxine Sherrin
The first four parts of this guide, including the all important sections on properties and selectors are available here for free as part of our collection of CSS resources, the House of Style.
What is the Complete CSS Guide?
When Cascading Style Sheets were introduced in late 1996, they represented an exciting new opportunity. They enabled much more sophisticated page design (typography and layout) than web developers had been used to, and they helped manage the complex tasks of developing and maintaining sites, and keeping them up to date. They also greatly simplified the process of making web pages accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of the device they use to read a page, and regardless of any disability they might have.
Since then, much about the web has changed. It's hard to believe now but in late 1996, Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice for the majority of web users. Internet Explorer from Microsoft lagged far behind in terms of features, performance, and number of users. Web browsing was something you did on a PC or Mac. HTML was not a single standard which was well adhered to, but a tangle of competing versions, with proprietary extensions. The dotcom boom was still gaining momentum, and the bust was just a twinkle in the naysayers' eyes.
Now, Internet Explorer dominates the browser scene even more than Netscape did back then. Browsers are built into mobile phones and people browse from television based systems, even games consoles. HTML has become a widely adhered to standard, and lots of those old proprietary extensions have either gone the way of all flesh, or become part of the standard. And slowly, slowly, intransigence, reluctance and skepticism towards CSS is fading away. Cascading style sheets are becoming a solid, well supported and easy to use technology for creating the appearance of web pages.
Many (internet) years ago, we put together a quite straightforward guide to getting up to speed with CSS. In time it's grown to accommodate changes in our knowledge and in CSS itself. This single guide has grown into a whole website, the "House of Style", with articles, tutorials, reference materials and more.
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XUL Programmer's Reference Manual

This document is a reference for the XML-based User Interface Language (XUL). Like the interface widgets that XUL describes, this reference is organized hierarchically. For example, almost all of the widgets inherit from the box widget, which means that they share the attributes described in that area of the reference. Where attributes are inherited, those attributes are italicized in the spelling for that widget. The menubar object and the attributes it inherits from box are a good example of this.
A very small collection of attributes are general to all widgets but not inherited from generalized widgets or tools like . These include attributes like id, with which every XUL widget can be specified. These attributes are defined in a common file. Where common attributes are implemented or used differently by different widgets, the attributes are described with their respective widgets. Values for class vary quite a bit from widget to widget, for example, so class is defined separately for each widget that includes it.
The following sections contain a very brief introduction to XUL. This introduction is intended merely to preface the XUL reference information that this document contains.
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XSL Concepts and Practical Use

What's with stylesheets in the first place?
  • XML is not a fixed tag set (like HTML)
  • XML by itself has no (application) semantics
  • A generic XML processor has no idea what is "meant" by the XML
  • XML markup does not (usually) include formatting information
  • The information in an XML document may not be in the form in which it is desired to present it
  • Therefore there must be something in addition to the XML document that provides information on how to present or otherwise process the XML

Advantages to separating content from style
Contrary to when style information is hard-coded into the content, separation of style from content allows for the same data to be presented in different ways. This enables:

  • Reuse of fragments of data: the same content should look different in different contexts
  • Multiple output formats: different media (paper, online), different sizes (manuals, reports), different classes of output devices (workstations, hand-held devices)
  • Styles tailored to the reader's preference (e.g., accessibility): print size, color, simplified layout for audio readers
  • Standardized styles: corporate stylesheets can be applied to the content at any time
  • Freedom from style issues for content authors: technical writers needn't be concerned with layout issues because the correct style can be applied later

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XML Basics - An Introduction to XML

by Jan Egil Refsnes
What is XML?
  • XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
  • XML is a markup language much like HTML.
  • XML was designed to describe data.
  • XML tags are not predefined in XML. You must define your own tags.
  • XML is self describing.
  • XML uses a DTD (Document Type Definition) to formally describe the data.

The main difference between XML and HTML

  • XML is not a replacement for HTML.XML and HTML were designed with different goals:
  • XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is.HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.
  • HTML is about displaying information, XML is about describing information.

XML is extensible
The tags used to markup HTML documents and the structure of HTML documents are predefined. The author of HTML documents can only use tags that are defined in the HTML standard.

XML allows the author to define his own tags and his own document structure.

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XML Road Map

XML, Extensible Markup Language Version 1.0. is a new language for the encoding of structured data on the Web. XML is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879). XML was originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing. Today XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web.
XML was designed to:
  • Enable internationalized media-independent electronic publishing
  • Allow industries to define platform-independent protocols for the exchange of data, especially the data of electronic commerce
  • Deliver information to user agents in a form that allows automatic processing after receipt
  • Make it easier to develop software to handle specialized information distributed over the Web
  • Make it easy for people to process data using inexpensive software
  • Allow people to display information the way they want it, under stylesheet control
  • Make it easier to provide metadata -- data about information -- that will help people find information and help information producers and consumers find each other

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XQL (XML Query Language)

By Jonathan Robie
As more and more information is either stored in XML, exchanged in XML, or presented as XML through various interfaces, the ability to intelligently query our XML data sources becomes increasingly important. XML documents are structured documents – they blur the distinction between data and documents, allowing documents to be treated as data sources, and traditional data sources to be treated as documents.
XQL is a query language designed specifically for XML. In the same sense that SQL is a query language for relational tables and OQL is a query language for objects stored in an object database, XQL is a query language for XML documents. The basic constructs of XQL correspond directly to the basic structures of XML, and XQL is closely related to XPath, the common locator syntax used by XSL and XPointers. Since queries, transformation patterns, and links are all based on patterns in structures found in possible XML documents, a common model for the pattern language used in these three applications is both possible and desirable, and a common syntax to express the patterns expressed by that model simplifies the task of the user who must master a variety of XML-related technologies. Although XQL originated before XSL Patterns, there were strong similarities between the two languages, and we have adopted XPath syntax for the constructs which differed. Not all constructs found in XPath were needed for queries, and some constructs used in XQL are not found in XPath, but the two languages share a common subset.
The XQL language described in this paper contains several features not found in previously published versions of the language, including joins, links, text containment, and extensible functions. These new features are inspired in large part by discussions stemming from the W3C QL '98 Workshop, and make it possible to combine information from heterogeneous data sources in powerful ways. Great care has been made to maintain the fundamental simplicity of XQL while adding these features.
This paper is intended as input for the upcoming W3C Query Language Activity, and for the further development of XPath.
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XML - Free Chapters

Here we are providing some links for XML books free chapters from O'Reily, Wrox Press and from some other publishers.
Free Chapters are from following books
  • XML in a Nutshell
  • Java and XML
  • Java Examples in a Nutshell
  • Learning XML
  • Professional XML
  • Professional Java XML Programming with Servlets and JSP
  • Designing Distributed Applications with XML, ASP, IE5, LDAP and MSMQ
  • Building Oracle XML Applications
  • The XML Bible, 2nd edition
  • XML How to Program

Various Links for downloading

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XML Certification Tutorial

By Vibha Verma
With XMLs popularity, and close relation between XML and Java, IBMs certification for XML is becoming popular. We offer now a tutorial on XML for IBM certification. This tutorial has been written by Vibha Verma. We are thankful to Vibha for making her notes available for Javaprepare readers.
This tutorial highlights important concepts that you must know for IBM's XML Certification exam. Read the tutorial when you have grasped the fundamentals of the XML technology and want to prepare for the Certification exam....
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XML for DB2 Information Integration

In many organizations, relational databases are the backbone for data storage and retrieval. Over the last couple of years, XML has become the de facto standard to exchange information between organizations, as well as between departments or applications within the same organization. Since data tends to live in databases, it needs to be converted from a relational format into an XML format when involved in those data exchanges, as well as converted (back) from XML into a relational format for storage, or for handling by other applications.
How can we achieve this? This IBM Redbook describes how to design the mapping between XML and relational data, and vice versa, to enable a flexible exchange of information.
IBM provides a number of products to help you bridge the gap between XML and its relational database, DB2. The DB2 engine itself provides support to generate XML fragments from relational data through the use of SQL/XML built-in functions. DB2 also provides the DB2 XML Extender. It allows you to perform XML composition, like SQL/XML, but also provides functionality to decompose XML documents and store XML documents intact inside the database. XML Extender also provides a set of transformation and validation functions. Another option to work with XML is to use the XML wrapper, a part of the set of non-relational wrappers of DB2 Information Integrator. This redbook also looks at the IBM tools available to assist you when dealing with XML, specifically WebSphere Application Developer and DB2 Control Center.To add a more practical angle, these functions and products are illustrated through the development of a simple application.
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XML and Databases

By Ronald Bourret
This paper gives a high-level overview of how to use XML with databases. It describes how the differences between data-centric and document-centric documents affect their usage with databases, how XML is commonly used with relational databases, and what native XML databases are and when to use them.
NOTE: Although the information discussed in this paper is (mostly) up-to-date, the idea that the world of XML and databases can be seen through the data-centric/document-centric divide is somewhat dated. At the time this paper was originally written (1999), it was a convenient metaphor for introducing native XML databases, which were then not widely understood, even in the database community. However, it was always somewhat unrealistic, as many XML documents are not strictly data-centric or document-centric, but somewhere in between. So while the data-centric/document-centric divide is a convenient starting point, it is better to understand the differences between XML-enabled databases and native XML databases and to choose the appropriate database based on your processing needs. For a more modern look at the difference between XML-enabled and native XML databases, see chapter 1 of XML for DB2 Information Integration.
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Softsteel WML Tutorial

This tutorial takes you through the basics of WAP, and provides all the information you need to create your own WAP pages using the Wireless Markup Language (WML). The WMLScript tutorial that we promised has unfortunately had to be postponed, however. We shall return to it when we have time.
Introduction to WAP
At the time of writing, the backlash against the mobile Internet is going strong. This is in major part a response to the massive hype that accompanied the first WAP-enabled handsets in 1999-2000. Whilst these devices were marketed as windows onto the Internet, their limitations soon became obvious. Not only were they unable to show most Internet content, with little content of their own, they were also very slow to connect and navigate.
This backlash is itself a creature of hype, however; as out of touch as the original euphoria. In a world grown accustomed to the capabilities of the wired Internet, it is easy to forget that the mobile Internet is still at a very early stage of development. In the next five years we will see much faster, 'always-on' networks. We will also see a range of functions taking advantage of browser location-awareness, providing services tailored just for portables. So, the mobile Internet is going to have a strong future. And - as with the wired Internet - the most successful developers will be those who get in early, ahead of the crowd...
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Transferring data between XML documents and relational databases

By Ronald Bourret
In this paper we will discuss strategies for transferring data between XML documents and relational databases according to two mappings (a table-based mapping and an object-based mapping) commonly used to map DTDs to relational databases. Although the discussion largely focuses on the difference between using SAX- and DOM-based tools to transfer data, it also discusses a number of strategies for traversing both the XML and database hierarchies and the tradeoffs among them.
IMPORTANT: The table-based mapping and the object-based mapping are not discussed in this paper. However, you must understand them before reading this paper. For more information, see Mapping DTDs to Databases.
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The XML Files: Using XML for Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer Applications

When you get right down to it, e-business is a simple concept. An e-business is an organization that connects critical business systems directly to key actors such as customers, employees, suppliers, and distributors, by using Internet technology. But this simple concept quickly becomes powerful. As customers, employees, suppliers and distributors are all connected to the business systems and information they need, e-business actually transforms key business processes. This book intends to present the emergence, and the impacts of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) in e-business world.
By reading this book, customers, IBM sales people, IT architects, and IT specialists will have the opportunity to understand how the “marriage” between XML technology and the IBM Application Framework for e-business can help to leverage e-business applications, particularly those based on business-to-business (B2B), and business-to-consumer (B2C) models.
In writing this book, residents had many discussions with IBM people involved in e-business, XML, and related technologies. They also “surfed the net” (IBM and non-IBM) to gather information about the e-business world in general, the IBM e-business vision and solution, and the XML technology applied to the e-business applications.
This book is designed to expand your knowledge on the following topics:
  • The e-business market: what is going on, trends, and directions.
  • The added value of XML technology to help to solve issues, and some challenges that arise through e-business applications such as data exchange, portal services, and pervasive device support.
  • How IBM cuts XML and related technologies down to size in its application Framework for e-business, including details of the IBM offering in terms of architecture and tools to design, develop, deploy, and run complex B2B models (applications sharing services among different trading partners), and B2C models (applications providing end-users with various services).

This book also depicts a case study in the eMarketPlace field that demonstrates the ability of XML technology combined with the IBM Application Framework for e-business to implement both B2B and B2C models.

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Processing XML with Java

By Elliotte Rusty Harold
Welcome to Processing XML with Java, a complete tutorial about writing Java programs that read and write XML documents. This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book about integrating XML with Java (and vice versa) you can buy. It contains over 1000 pages of detailed information on SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, TrAX, XPath, XSLT, SOAP, and lots of other juicy acronyms. This book is written for Java programmers who want to learn how to read and write XML documents from their code. The paper version is published by Addison-Wesley, and can be found at fine bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The list price is $54.95, but most bookstores are offering their usual discounts...
This book is written for experienced Java programmers who want to integrate XML into their systems. Java is the ideal language for processing XML documents. Its strong Unicode support in particular made it the preferred language for many early implementers. Consequently, more XML tools have been written in Java than in any other language. More open source XML tools are written in Java than in any other language. More programmers process XML in Java than in any other language.
Processing XML with Java will teach you how to:
  • Save XML documents from applications written in Java
  • Read XML documents produced by other programs
  • Search, query, and update XML documents
  • Convert legacy flat data into hierarchical XML
  • Communicate with network servers that send and receive XML data
  • Validate documents against DTDs, schemas, and business rules
  • Combine functional XSLT transforms with traditional imperative Java code

This book is meant for Java programmers who need to do anything with XML. It teaches the fundamentals and advanced topics, leaving nothing out. It is a comprehensive course in processing XML with Java that takes developers from little knowledge of XML to designing sophisticated XML applications and parsing complicated documents. The examples cover a wide range of possible uses including file formats, data exchange, document transformation, database integration, and more.

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Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0

W3C Recommendation 10-February-1998

Abstract

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.

Status of this document
This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web...
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Introduction to XML for web developers

Introduction to XML for Web Developers is a four-part course designed by Selena Sol. Other tutorials are available at Web Ware.
What is XML
Like HTML, XML (also known as Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language which relies on the concept of rule-specifying tags and the use of a tag-processing application that knows how to deal with the tags.
"The correct title of this specification, and the correct full name of XML, is "Extensible Markup Language". "eXtensible Markup Language" is just a spelling error. However, the abbreviation "XML" is not only correct but, appearing as it does in the title of the specification, an official name of the Extensible Markup Language.
The name and abbreviation were invented by James Clark; other options under consideration had included MGML, (Minimal Generalized Markup Language), MAGMA (Minimal Architecture For Generalized Markup Applications), and SLIM (Structured Language for Internet Markup)" - Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Specs, The Annotated Version.
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Introduction to XML

XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is. HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.
What You Should Already Know
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
  • HTML / XHTML
  • JavaScript or VBScript

What is XML?

  • XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
  • XML is a markup language much like HTML
  • XML was designed to describe data
  • XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
  • XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data
  • XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive
  • XML is a W3C Recommendation

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Ground Zero XML Tutorial

XML in relation to Markup Languages
This manual is intended for users with no previous experience in web publishing. We must therefore assume that if you read this, you have no experience with areas such as HTML, Java or Cgi. Not to worry. You don't need to have any experience from HTML to learn XML. The one advantage you have if you know something about HTML already is that most textbooks teach XML in a way that relies heavily on pointing out the differences between the two languages. This is not so strange considering that HTML and XML are "siblings" in the sense that they are derived from the same "parent" language: SGML. This leads us to our angle on this manual. Instead of comparing XML to HTML, we will try to see XML in relation to markup languages in general and how this can be a worthwhile addition to the World Wide Web.
What is Markup ?
This brings us to our first item on the agenda: what exactly is a markup language? In the more general sense of the term, it is by no means a new word. It has been used for quite some time in the print and design world as a means for the author/publisher of a text to highlight sections that have some sort of special structural or contextual meaning. This could be anything from individual words that carry a special meaning or simply an indication of where one chapter ends and another one starts. The tradition of marking up texts goes all the way back to the time when scribes wrote their comments in the margins around the edge of the manuscript, or used different inks to make certain words stand out from the rest of the text.
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Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879). Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere.
This page describes the work being done at W3C within the XML Activity, and how it is structured. Work at W3C takes place in Working Groups. The Working Groups within the XML Activity are listed below, together with links to their individual web pages.
You can find and download formal technical specifications here, because we publish them. This is not a place to find tutorials, products, courses, books or other XML-related information. There are some links below that may help you find such resources.
You will find links to W3C Recommendations, Proposed Recommendations, Working Drafts, conformance test suites and other documents on the pages for each Working Group. Each document also contains email addresses you can use to send comments or questions, for example if you have been writing software to implement them and have found problems or errors.
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DocBook: The Definitive Guide

By Norman Walsh & Leonard Muellner
This book is designed to be the clear, concise, normative reference to the DocBook DTD. This book is the official documentation for the DocBook DTD.
We hope to answer, definitively, all the questions you might have about all the elements and entities in DocBook. In particular, we cover the following subjects:
  • The general nature of DocBook. With over 300 elements, DocBook can be a bit overwhelming at first. We quickly get you up to speed on how the pieces fit together.
  • How to write DocBook documents. Where should you start and what should you do?
  • Parsing and validation. After you've written a document, how can you tell if it really conforms to the DocBook DTD?
  • How to publish DocBook documents. After you've written one, what do you do with it? We provide a guide to using some popular free tools to publish DocBook documents both in print and on the Web.
  • Customizing the DTD. Many individuals and corporations have standardized on the DocBook DTD. Whether your subject matter is computer software documentation or not, we explain how you can write a "customization layer" to tailor DocBook explicitly for your information.
  • Understanding all of the elements. Each element is extensively documented, including the intended semantics and the purpose of all its attributes. An example of proper usage is given for every element. The parameter entities and character entities are also described.
    Stylesheets. Several standard stylesheet languages are briefly described.
  • XML compatability. We outline all of the points that you'll need to consider as you or your organization contemplate XML for authoring, publishing, or both.
  • Additional resources and a CD-ROM. Finally, we direct you to other places you can go for all the latest info, and offer a complete set of online documentation on the CD-ROM.

We expect that most readers will have some familiarity with SGML or XML. Even if your experience goes no farther than writing a few HTML pages, you're probably in good shape. Although we provide an introduction to SGML, XML, and structured markup, this book may not suffice as your only tutorial about SGML and XML. This depends, naturally, on your needs and experience. For a list of some other good resources, consult Appendix D.

Some sections of this book describe tools and applications. For the most part, these are Microsoft Windows or UNIX applications, although there's nothing about DocBook that makes it unsuitable for the Mac or VM/CMS or any other operating system of your choice.

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A Query Language for XML

An important application of XML is the interchange of electronic data (EDI) between multiple data sources on the Web. As XML data proliferates on the Web, applications will need to integrate and aggregate data from multiple source and clean and transform data to facilitate exchange. Data extraction, conversion, transformation, and integration are all well-understood database problems, and their solutions rely on a query language. We present a query language for XML, called XML-QL, which we argue is suitable for performing the above tasks. XML-QL is a declarative, ``relational complete'' query language and is simple enough that it can be optimized. XML-QL can extract data from existing XML documents and construct new XML documents.
Keywords: XML, query languages, electronic-data interchange (EDI)
Introduction
The goal of XML is to provide many of SGML's benefits not available in HTML and to provide them in a language that is easier to learn and use than complete SGML. These benefits include user-defined tags, nested elements, and an optional validation of document structure with respect to a Document Type Descriptor (DTD).
One important application of XML is the interchange of electronic data (EDI) between two or more data sources on the Web. Electronic data is primarily intended for computer, not human, consumption. For example, search robots could integrate automatically information from related sources that publish their data in XML format, e.g., stock quotes from financial sites, sports scores from news sites; businesses could publish data about their products and services, and potential customers could compare and process this information automatically; and business partners could exchange internal operational data between their information systems on secure channels. New opportunities will arise for third parties to add value by integrating, transforming, cleaning, and aggregating XML data. In this paper, we focus on XML's application to EDI. Specifically, we take a database view, as opposed to document view, of XML. We consider an XML document to be a database and a DTD to be a database schema.
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Voodoo’s Introduction to Javascript

By Stefan Koch
This tutorial is an introduction to JavaScript. I have started this tutorial as an online tutorial where you can test all examples immediately. As the tutorial grew larger a printable version was required.
What is JavaScript
JavaScript is a new scripting language which is being developed by Netscape. With JavaScript you can easily create interactive web-pages. This tutorial shows you what can be done with JavaScript - and more importantly how it is done.
JavaScript is not Java!
Many people believe that JavaScript is the same as Java because of the similar names. This is not true though. I think it would go too far at the moment to show you all the differences - so just memorize that JavaScript is not Java. For further information on this topic please read the introduction provided by Netscape or my book :-)
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Introduction to JavaScript

The introduction to JavaScript explains you the basic of JavaScript web scripting. Following are the few topics covered in this JavaScript document.
  • What is JavaScript
  • Uses of JavaScript
  • Writing JavaScirpt
  • Programming Basics
  • Variables
  • Functions
  • JavaScript Objects
  • Objects
  • Properties
  • Methods
  • Document and Window Objects
  • Write to a Document
  • Open a Window
  • JavaScript Events
  • Events and Objects
  • Image Rollovers
JavaScript Origins
JavaScript was released by Netscape and Sun Microsystems in 1995. However, JavaScript is not the same thing as Java.
What is JavaScript
  • It is a programming language.
  • It is an interpreted language.
  • It is object-based programming.
  • It is widely used and supported
  • It is accessible to the beginner.
Uses of JavaScript
  • Use it to add multimedia elements: With JavaScript you can show, hide, change, resize images, and create image rollovers. You can create scrolling text across the status bar.
  • Create pages dynamically: Based on the user's choices, the date, or other external data, JavaScript can produce pages that are customized to the user.
  • Interact with the user: It can do some processing of forms and can validate user input when the user submits the form.
Read more/Try it
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Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours

By Michael Moncur
JavaScript is one of the easiest, most straightforward ways to enhance a Web site with interactivity.
Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours serves as an easy-to-understand tutorial on both scripting basics and JavaScript itself ...
Introduction
The World Wide Web began as a simple repository for information, but it has grown into much more—it entertains, teaches, advertises, and communicates. As the Web has evolved, the tools have also evolved. Simple markup tools such as HTML have been joined by true programming languages—including JavaScript.
Now don't let the word "programming" scare you. For many, the term conjures up images of long nights staring at the screen, trying to remember which sequence of punctuation marks will produce the effect you need. (Don't get me wrong. Some of us enjoy that sort of thing.)
Although JavaScript is programming, it's a very simple language. As a matter of fact, if you haven't programmed before, it makes a great introduction to programming. It requires very little knowledge to start programming with JavaScript—you'll write your first program in Hour 2, "Creating a Simple Script."
If you can create a Web page with HTML, you can easily use JavaScript to improve a page. JavaScript programs can range from a single line to a full-scale application. In this book, you'll start with simple scripts, and proceed to complex applications, such as a card game.
If you've spent much time developing pages for the Web, you know that the Web is constantly changing, and it can be hard to keep up with the latest languages and tools. This book will help you add JavaScript to your Web development toolbox, and I think you'll enjoy learning it.
I really had fun writing this book—and believe it or not, writing isn't always fun. I hope you'll have as much fun as you experiment with JavaScript and its capabilities.
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JavaScript Primer

So what is JavaScript? Is it Java? What does it do? Is it difficult to learn? These questions will all be answered in this tutorial, and more. Just to get us started, JavaScript is basically a scripting language that helps kick HTML into overdrive. With it, elements in a document can be programmatically accessed and manipulated, bringing a dull web page to life.
If you are content with using simply html to create web pages, you are ready to head out to our special tutorial , how to make fire with sticks; the rest of us, lets rock.
In this tutorial, we'll be looking at the following topics:
  1. Tutorial introduction
  2. FAQs about this language.
  3. Getting Started: Setting Up your code.
  4. Introducing objects-what JavaScript's made of
  5. Using the document object to explain objects.
  6. Functions and creating your own functions

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JavaScript Authoring Guide

The JavaScript Language
JavaScript is a compact, object-based scripting language for developing client and server Internet applications. Netscape Navigator 2.0 interprets JavaScript statements embedded directly in an HTML page, and LiveWire enables you to create server-based applications similar to common gateway interface (CGI) programs.
In a client application for Navigator, JavaScript statements embedded in an HTML page can recognize and respond to user events such as mouse clicks, form input, and page navigation.
For example, you can write a JavaScript function to verify that users enter valid information into a form requesting a telephone number or zip code. Without any network transmission, an HTML page with embedded JavaScript can interpret the entered text and alert the user with a message dialog if the input is invalid. Or you can use JavaScript to perform an action (such as play an audio file, execute an applet, or communicate with a plug-in) in response to the user opening or exiting a page.
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Javascript Tutorial

JavaScript is a scripting language that will allow you to add real programming to your webpages.
You can use this tutorial either as a complete introduction or as an A-Z reference to JavaScript.
The pages are packed with: Easy to understand explanations, massive examples, tips, smart workarounds and useful quick references.
If you're completely new to JavaScript you should start with the section that covers JavaScript Basics.
Introduction
Javascript is a scripting language that will allow you to add real programming to your webpages. You can create small application type processes with javascript, like a calculator or a primitive game of some sort.However, there are more serious uses for javascript:
  • Browser Detection - Detecting the browser used by a visitor at your page. Depending on the browser, another page specifically designed for that browser can then be loaded.
  • Cookies - Storing information on the visitor's computer, then retrieving this information automatically next time the user visits your page. This technique is called "cookies".
  • Control Browsers - Opening pages in customized windows, where you specify if the browser's buttons, menu line, status line or whatever should be present.
  • Validate Forms - Validating inputs to fields before submitting a form.An example would be validating the entered email address to see if it has an @ in it, since if not, it's not a valid address.

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Writing World-Wide Web CGI Scripts in REXX

This talk is aimed at people who have experience with REXX and are interested in using it to write WWW CGI scripts. As part of this, I will describe several functions that are available in a library of REXX functions that simplify writing WWW CGI scripts. This library is freely available at //www.slac.stanford.edu/slac/www/tool/cgi-rexx/
Environment Variables
In uni-REXX the setting of an environment variable is returned by the GETENV(string) function, where string is the name of the environment variable whose setting is to be returned. The examples in this article make use of GETENV.
Other implementations of REXX, such as the OS/2 implementation, often use the REXX VALUE(name[,newvalue][,selector]) function (where the brackets ([]) indicate optional arguments). This can return the value of the variable named by name. The selector names an implementation-defined external collection of variables. If newvalue is supplied, then the named variable is assigned this new value.
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