Chapter 7: Dynamic Data on the World-Wide Web

Lesson Goals

Students are knowledgeable composers of JavaScript, the programming language of the Web, and can create Web pages by manipulating the Document Object Model.

Lesson Outcomes

Students can:

• Program basic JavaScripts to process content
• Develop Web pages using JavaScript
• Manipulate the Document Object Model using the programming library jQuery

Introduction

Web pages are built from textual, graphic, and other content using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and are styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

To make this process much easier, the JavaScript programming language can provide a lot of the heavy lifting by simplifying repetitive processes.

In addition, Web browsers provide JavaScript with an application programming interface (API) so that it can perform common tasks such as manipulating the structure of the document to insert, modify, and remove different pieces dynamically.

Because many of these tasks are naturally grouped together, programming libraries such as the open-source jQuery facilitate the process.

In this chapter we will learn about these dynamic capabilities of the Web and how they are essential to Web-based GIST.