JavaScript Introduction

This course is part of W3C's "Front-End Web Developer" Professional Certificate.

JavaScript lets you add interactive features to your Web sites, including dynamically updated content, controlled multimedia, animated images, and much more. Developed in partnership between W3C and University Côte d'Azur, this introductory course has been designed to help Web developers have an understanding of the basic concepts of the language. We present JavaScript best practices by means of many interactive examples, some of which being demonstrated in live coding videos.

We use JavaScript in the Web browser. Why JavaScript is worth your time:

• HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are the “classic three” for developers and designers;
• It adds interactivity to your Web sites;
• It is powerful, easy to learn, and quick to write;
• It has great tools (editors, runtimes, lint tools, browsers, and third party libraries) as well as great online support through plenty of active open source communities.

At the end of the course, we expect you to be able to read the source code of any JavaScript example found on the Web, learn from it, tweak it, and even – why not? – start contributing to open-source JavaScript projects.

Module 1: Introduction to JavaScript

• JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• JavaScript overview
• Your first HTML/CSS/JS page
• Variables, values, functions, operators, and expressions
• Simple JavaScript examples to play with

Module 2: Adding interactivity to HTML

• Conditional statements, loops and logical operators
• Functions and callbacks
• Handling events
• The DOM API
• Let's write a small game

Module 3: Playing with HTML5

• Arrays and iterators
• HTML5 multimedia and JavaScript API
• Displaying a map with the Geolocation API
• Playing sound samples and music

Module 4: Structuring data

• Objects, properties and methods
• Creating multiple objects
• Improving the small game with classes

Module 5: Working with forms

• Built-in JavaScript objects
• HTML5 tables, forms and input fields
• The JSON notation
• Let's create a small application