Developing Large Web Applications

by Loudon, Kyle

• ISBN13: 9780596803025
• ISBN10: 0596803028
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-15
• Publisher: Oreilly & Associates Inc

Summary

How do you create a mission-critical site that provides exceptional performance while remaining flexible, adaptable, and reliable 24/7? Written by the manager of a UI group at Yahoo!, Developing Large Web Applications offers practical steps for building rock-solid applications that remain effective even as you add features, functions, and users. You'll learn how to develop large web applications with the extreme precision required for other types of software. Avoid common coding and maintenance headaches as small websites add more pages, more code, and more programmers Get comprehensive solutions for refining HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ajax for large-scale web applications Make changes in one place that ripple through all affected page elements Embrace the virtues of modularity, encapsulation, abstraction, and loosely coupled components Use tried-and-true techniques for managing data exchange, including working with forms and cookies Learn often-overlooked best practices in code management and software engineering Prepare your code to make performance enhancements and testing easier

Author Biography

Kyle Loudon is a software developer at Yahoo! where he leads a group doing user interface development. Some of Kyle's experiences prior to joining Yahoo! include working on the user interface for the original Apple iPod, writing software for various other mobile devices, and leading the user interface group at Jeppesen Dataplan (a Boeing company) in the development of a flight planning system used by airlines around the world. He also spent a small amount of time with IBM in the early 1990s. For several years, he has taught object-oriented programming part-time at the University of California, Santa Cruz while working as a software developer in Silicon Valley.

Kyle received a B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University in 1992 with a minor in French, and was elected there to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He has also done some advanced education in Computer Science at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
The Tenets	p. 1
Managing Complexity	p. 1
Modular Components	p. 3
Achieving Modularity	p. 3
Benefits of Modularity	p. 4
Ten Tenets for Large Web Applications	p. 4
Object Orientation	p. 7
The Fundamentals of OOP	p. 8
Why Object Orientation?	p. 9
UML Class Diagrams	p. 9
Generalization	p. 10
Association	p. 10
Modeling a Web Page	p. 11
Defining Page Types	p. 11
Defining Module Types	p. 11
Writing the Code	p. 12
Achieving Modularity	p. 14
Object-Oriented PHP	p. 15
Classes and Interfaces	p. 15
Inheritance in PHP	p. 19
Object-Oriented JavaScript	p. 22
Objects	p. 22
Inheritance in JavaScript	p. 25
Large-Scale HTML	p. 27
Modular HTML	p. 28
A Bad Example: Using a Table and Presentation Markup	p. 28
A Better Example: Using CSS	p. 30
The Best Example: Semantically Meaningful HTML	p. 31
Benefits of Good HTML	p. 35
HTML Tags	p. 37
Bad HTML Tags	p. 37
Good HTML Tags	p. 38
IDs, Classes, and Names	p. 40
Conventions for Naming	p. 41
XHTML	p. 41
Benefits of XHTML	p. 41
XHTML Guidelines	p. 42
RDFa	p. 45
RDFa Triples	p. 45
Applying RDFa	p. 46
HTML 5	p. 49
Large-Scale CSS	p. 51
Modular CSS	p. 52
Including CSS	p. 52
Applying CSS	p. 55
Specificity and Importance	p. 57
Scoping with CSS	p. 58
Standard Module Formats	p. 63
Positioning Techniques	p. 65
CSS Box Model	p. 66
Document Flow	p. 67
Relative Positioning	p. 68
Absolute Positioning	p. 68
Floating	p. 70
Layouts and Containers	p. 71
Example Layouts	p. 72
Example Containers	p. 80
Other Practices	p. 82
Browser Reset CSS	p. 83
Font Normalization	p. 85
Large-Scale JavaScript	p. 87
Modular JavaScript	p. 88
Including JavaScript	p. 88
Scoping with JavaScript	p. 90
Working with the DOM	p. 92
Common DOM Methods	p. 92
Popular DOM Libraries	p. 93
Working with Events	p. 98
Event Handling Normalization	p. 99
A Bad Example: Global Data in Event Handlers	p. 99
A Good Example: Object Data in Event Handlers	p. 100
Event-Driven Applications	p. 101
Working with Animation	p. 102
Motion Animation	p. 102
Sizing Animation	p. 103
Color Transition	p. 104
An Example: Chained Selection Lists	p. 105
Data Management	p. 115
Dynamic Modules	p. 116
Data Managers	p. 117
Creating Data Managers	p. 120
Extending Data Managers	p. 121
Data Using SQL As a Source	p. 123
An SQL Example	p. 124
Data Using XML As a Source	p. 127
An XML Example	p. 127
Data from Web Services	p. 131
Data in the JSON Format	p. 132
Cookies and Forms	p. 133
Managing Data in Cookies	p. 133
Managing Data from Forms	p. 134
Large-Scale PHP	p. 135
Modular Web Pages	p. 136
Generating Pages in PHP	p. 136
Working with Pages	p. 141
Public Interface for the Page Class	p. 141
Abstract Interface for the Page Class	p. 144
Implementation of the Page Class	p. 147
Extending the Page Class	p. 157
Working with Modules	p. 162
Public Interface for the Module Class	p. 162
Abstract Interface for the Module Class	p. 163
Implementation of the Module Class	p. 164
Extending the Module Class	p. 165
An Example Module: Slideshow	p. 165
Layouts and Containers	p. 177
Special Considerations	p. 180
Handling Module Variations	p. 180
Multiple Instances of a Module	p. 181
Dynamic JavaScript and CSS	p. 182
Implementing Nested Modules	p. 182
Large-Scale Ajax	p. 185
In the Browser	p. 186
Managing Connections	p. 186
Using Ajax Libraries	p. 189
On the Server	p. 194
Exchange Formats	p. 194
Server Proxies	p. 197
Modular Ajax	p. 198
MVC and Ajax	p. 200
Using Ajax with MVC	p. 201
Public Interface for the Model Object	p. 206
Implementation of the Model Object	p. 207
Public Interface for the View Object	p. 209
Abstract Interface for the View Object	p. 209
View Object Implementation	p. 210
Public Interface for the Connect Object	p. 210
Abstract Interface for the Connect Object	p. 211
Implementation of the Connect Object	p. 212
Controllers	p. 214
An Example of Ajax with MVC: Accordion Lists	p. 215
Performance	p. 221
Caching Opportunities	p. 222
Caching CSS and JavaScript	p. 222
Caching Modules	p. 227
Caching for Pages	p. 231
Caching with Ajax	p. 231
Using Expires Headers	p. 233
Managing JavaScript	p. 234
JavaScript Placement	p. 234
JavaScript Minification	p. 234
Removing Duplicates	p. 235
Distribution of Assets	p. 237
Content Delivery Networks	p. 237
Minimizing DNS Lookups	p. 237
Minimizing HTTP Requests	p. 238
Control Over Site Metrics	p. 241
Modular Testing	p. 243
Using Test Data	p. 243
Creating Test Data	p. 245
Application Architecture	p. 247
Thinking Modularly	p. 247
Organizing Components	p. 248
Sitewide Architecture	p. 248
Section Architecture	p. 254
Architecture for Pages	p. 256
Architecture and Maintenance	p. 258
Reorganizing Module Uses	p. 258
Adding Module Variations	p. 261
Making Widespread Changes	p. 263
Changes in Data Sources	p. 266
Exposing Modules Externally	p. 268
Index	p. 271
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