DOM Scripting

Use underscore for variable name and camel case for function:
```
var temp_celsius;
function convertToCelsius(){}
```
Use var to define a local variable, if not defined with var, the variable will be treated as global.
3 kinds of objects in javascript: Native; User-defined; Host(browser provided).

Native objects:

var current_date = new Date();
current_date.getDate();
// getHours(); getMonth();

Objects that are supplied by the web browser are called host objects. An important object: document.
When you load your document into the browser, the DOM comes to life and the document turns into an object.
window object is a global object, and document is a property of window object(window.document).
If the document is a tree(node tree), then the <html> element will be the root.
wildcard: alert(getElementsByTagName("*").length); // will give you the total number of element nodes in a document.
getElementById("purchases").getElementsByTagName("*");
getElementsByClassName(class): will return an array, the order of the class name doesn't matter, matches if the element has addtional classes.

scripters' getElementByClassName function:(work only for single class)

 1 function getElementsByClassName(node, classname){
 2     if(node.getElementsByClassName){
 3         // use the existing method
 4         return node.getElementByClassName(classname);
 5     } else {
 6         var res = new Array();
 7         var elems = node.getElementsByTagName("*");
 8         for(var i = 0; i < elems.length; i++){
 9             if(elems[i].className.indexOf(classname) != -1){
10                 res[res[i]] = elems[i];
11             }
12         }
13         return res;
14     }
15 }

every element node in a document is an object.
getAttribute("title") will return null if there is no such attribute.
if(something) is a shorthand way of if(something != null)
childNodes: it returns an array containing all the children of an element node(with attribute nodes, text nodes as well).
nodeType:(node.nodeType)
- Element nodes have nodeType value of 1;
- Attribute nodes have nodeType value of 2;
- Text nodes have nodeType value of 3.

nodeValue(can be used to retrieve or set value):

var description = document.getElementById("description");
// <p id="description">Choose an image</p>
var text = description.childNodes[0].nodeValue;  // get the text node value
// the paragraph's nodeValue itself is empty.

firstChild, lastChild:

// node.firstChild is equivalent to node.childNodes[0]
// node.lastChild = node.childNodes[node.childNodes.length - 1]

A simple popup window:

// syntax:
window.open(url, name, features);
// such as:
function popUp(Url){
    window.open(Url, "popUp", "width=320,height=480");
}

<a href="#">Bla bla bla</a>: The '#' symbol is used for internal links within document.(in this case, it's an internal link to nowhere)

'this' can be used to refer to the current element:

<a href="http://www.google.com" onclick="popUp(this.href);return false;"></a>  // an example of graceful degradation

.href property:

// <a id="link" href="http://www.google.com"></a>
document.write(document.getElementById("link").href);
// syntax: elementObject.href

the document object is a property of the window object

window.onload = preparelins;
  function preparelinks(){
  var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
  for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++){
      if(links[i].getAttribute("class") == "popup"){
          links[i].onclick = function(){
              popUp(this.getAttribute("href"));
              return false;
          }
      }
  }
}
function popUp(Url){window.open(Url, "popup", "width=320,height=480;")}

Object detection:

function myFunc(){
    if(document.getElementById){
        // statements;
    }
}

Better test for getElementById:

if(!getElementById){
    return false;
}
// equals:
if(!getElementById)return false;

Wrap everthing up:

window.onload = function(){
  if(!document.getElementsByTagName) return false;
     var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
     for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++){
       if(links[i].getAttribute("class") == "popup"){
         link[i].onclick = function(){
           popUp(this.getAttribute("a"));
           return false;
         }
       }
     }
}

Performance considerations:
- Minimizing DOM access and markup
- Assembling and placing scripts
- Minification(Minification refers to the process of taking your script and “compressing” it by removing the unnecessary bits such as whitespace and comments); better keep two files at hand, one for working, another for minimized file(use min in your file name)

Available minification tools:

1 Douglas Crockford’s JSMin (http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html)
2 Yahoo!’s YUI Compressor (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/)
3 Google’s Closure Compiler (http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home)

createElement:

window.onload = function(){
    var testdiv = document.getElementById("testdiv"),
        para = document.createElement("p"),
        info = "nodeName: ";
    info += para.nodeName;
    info += " nodeType: ";
    info += para.nodeType;
    alert(info);
}// whenever you create an element, it's called a document fragment. It has nodeName, nodeType value.

appendChild:
```
testdiv.appendChild(para);
```
Adds a node to the end of the list of children of a specified parent node. If the node already exists it is removed from current parent node, then added to new parent node.

insertBefore: syntax, parentElement.insertBefore(newElement, targetElement);

var gallery = document.getElementById("imagegallery");
gallery.parentNode.insertBefore(placeholder, gallery);

DOM does not have a insert-after method, we can create one:

function insertAfter(newElement, targetElement){
  var parent = targetElement.parentNode;
  if(targetElement == parent.lastChild){
    parent.appendChild(newElement);
  } else {
    parent.insertBefore(newElement, targetElement.nextSibling);
  }
}

addLoadEvent function:

function addLoadEvent(func){
  var oldonload = window.onload;
  if(typeof window.onload != 'function'){
    windwo.onload = func;
  } else {
    window.onload = function(){
      oldonload();
      func();
    }
  }
}

DOM-core and HTML-DOM:

// DOM-core:
document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
// HTML-DOM:
document.body;

Internet Explorer will count up the child nodes for each <abbr> element and incorrectly come up with zero each time. So, for compatibility issues, you wanna add these lines to deal with <abbr> elements:
```
var abbreviations = document.getElementsByTagName("abbr");
// inside for loop:
if(abbreviations[i].childNodes.length<1) continue;
```
Notice:
```
<blockquote>
  <p>
    Some sentences...
  </p>
</blockquote>
```
between the end of </p> element and the </blockquote> element, there is a line break, some browers will treat this line break as a text node. That means the lastChild property of blockquote element node isn't p element node, it's a text node. When in doubt, you can use nodeType to check it out.

wildcard character:

var quoteElements = document.getElementsByTagName("*");
// returns an array of elements regardless of name

Access key: The accesskey attribute associates an element, such as a link, with a specific key on a keyboard. On many Windows browsers, you can press Alt+access key; on many Mac browsers, you can press Ctrl+access key.
```
<a href="index.html" accesskey="1">Home</a>  // see http://clagnut.com/blog/193/
// var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); links[0].firstChild.nodeValue; // 'Home'// links[0].firstChild.nodeValue; // 'Home'
```
every element object has a style property, and it is returned as an object. Style information is stored as properties of this style object:
```
element.style.property
```
when retrieve font-family info, you should:
```
element.style.fontFamily; // not element.style.font-family
// it will treat - as substraction
```
The camel-casing convention applies to just about any CSS property that contains one or more dashes. Such as, background-color:backgroundColor; font-weight: fontWeight; magrin-top-marginTopWidth; The style object only work for inline style, not for external or <style> block in the <head> section.

The value of a style property is always a string:

var para = document.getElementById("example");
para.style.color = black;     // wrong
para.style.color = "black";   // right

Using tables for layout is not a good idea, But you should definitely use tables to display tabular data.

className: an earily version to get access to class attribute:

element.className = value; // to avoid overwriting the existed class value, you can use:
element.className += value;

The process of take something very specific and turning it into something more general is called abstraction. Usually for code reuse.

setTimeout: takes 2 arguments, first one is the function name, second is the millisecond before executing the function:

variable = setTimeout("function", interval);
clearTimeout(variable);  // cancel a pending action
var num = parseInt(string); // extract number from a string
var steps = parseInt("39 stepts"); // return 39
var num2 = parseFloat(string);

Modernizr: a small library for HTML5 feature detection. Download it(http://www.modernizr.com) and add a script to the <head> of your document:
```
<script src="modernizr-1.5.min.js"></script>
```
To reduce the number of requests, put all your code into a global.js file. Also, use basic.css and do:
```
@import url(color.css);
@import url(layout.css);
// ...
```

Several usefull functions:

function addLoadEvent(func){
    var oldonload = window.onload;
    if(typeof window.onload != 'function'){
        window.onload = func;
    } else {
        window.onload = function(){
            oldonload();
            func();
        }
    }
} 

function addClass(element, value){
    if(!element.className){
        element.className = value;
    } else {
        newClassName = element.className;
        newClassName += " ";
        newClassName += value;
        element.className = newClassName;   
    }
}

You can get the URL of the current page using window.location.href;

what labels used for:

// in case there is no browser support for label focus
function focusLabels(){
    if(!document.getElementsByTagName) return false;
    var labels = document.getElementsByTagName("label");
    for (var i = 0; i < labels.length; i++){
        if(!labels[i].getAttribute("for")) continue;
        labels[i].onclick = function(){
            var id = this.getAttribute("for");
            if(!document.getElementById(id)) return false;
            var element = document.getElementById(id);
            element.focus();
        }
    }
}

form.elements.length: returns the number of elements contained by a form, The elements.length property of a Form object returns only those elements that are form elements, such as input elements, textarea elements, and so on.
form.elements is an array contains all the form elements.
hasChildNodes() method: returns a Boolean value indicating whether the current Node has child nodes or not.
elementNode.removeChild(node): remove a child node;

The encodeURIcomponent() function encodes a URI component:

var uri="http://w3schools.com/my test.asp?name=ståle&car=saab";
document.write(encodeURIComponent(uri));

Google's Closure Compiler for minification:http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home
CDN: Content Delivery Network solves the problems of shared library distribution. Include the URL in the <script> src attribute.
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