Peter-Paul Koch explains how to create beautiful JavaScript and shows you how to combine it with proper HTML and CSS for the best web experience in ppk on JavaScript. Here is my review.

The structure of this book

ppk begins with a brief history of JavaScript and explains the “fat and thin” JavaScript cycle. I would agree with him on that we are in a fattening state right now, but I think the tides will turn soon (my guess is before 2010).

Then ppk gives a basic overview of accessibility (which he adds to later) before introducing us to the 8 real world scripts used as examples in this book:

• Textarea Maxlength
• Usable Forms
• Form Validation
• Dropdown Menu
• Edit Style Sheets
• Sandwich Picker
• XMLHTTP Speed Meter
• Site Survey

We then see chapters on browsers, how to prepare your markup for good JavaScript and a series of chapters that use his examples heavily giving light on several very diverse topics of JavaScript. Continue reading →

You see it in Google search results and a lot of other sites that have good search functionality. When you perform a search, your words or phrases are highlighted in the search results making it easy for you to find the most relevant content.

Today I’m going to show you a simple way to add this to your website or blog so your users can find what they need in style. I think that this kind of thing should be implemented more often for how easy it is to implement.

Here we go! Continue reading →

A rarely used CSS property that can be very useful given the right circumstances is the table-layout property. It has great rendering speed benefit when used properly. Obviously this will only apply to HTML <table>s, which I know none of you would EVER overuse. Tables are not totally evil, they have their proper implementations and their really, really bad ones. OK, on to the code:
Continue reading →