Programming for the Web

This book develops a web application from scratch, and teaches the technologies it uses by the example of the application. The topics include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, Create-Read-Update-Delete (CRUD) interface, RESTFUL interface using Node.js and Sails, and GIS and map interface programming using OpenLayers.

This book was written for programmers who, like the author, want to get a simple, complete, and useful example application up and running. Then using the simple application the details can be learned by modifying the application, and reading the documentation and tutorials in the context of the problems they are addressing.

If you are interested in programming for the web, and learn best by modifying example code, this book was written for you.

Note that this book was put online in a “Beta” form. It is useful and good, but it is not complete. This is the advantage to open source books, they can be updated online as changes are made (like open source software), and in open source the CS discipline is at least 25 or 30 years ahead of most academic disciplines. (…Maybe 200 years ahead of Humanities and Liberal Arts, as they believe that 200 year old technology is too new. And besides, useful ideas such as open source do not have the gadget feel of mostly useless “gee whiz” technologies they try to adapt. I am not a big fan of the general educational value of Liberal Arts and Humanities EXCEPT as avocation.)

Note that the link is the main site for this book. At the link are two downloads. The first is the text of the book in pdf format. The second is a zip file of resources, including all programs.