A new session of each course opens each month, allowing you to enroll whenever your busy schedule permits!
How does it work? Once a session starts, two lessons will be released each week, for the six-week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends.
Keep in mind that the interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes 2 weeks after each lesson is released, so you’re encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.
The Final Exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the Final Exam has been released, you will have 2 weeks plus 10 days to complete the Final and finish any remaining lessons in your course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.
Week One
Lesson 01 - What Is JavaScript?
Wednesday
In this lesson, you'll get right into it and learn what JavaScript is, where it came from, who uses it, and why you want to learn it. Most important, you'll learn how and where to write JavaScript and not just about history, theory, or concepts. You'll go hands-on, and by the time you finish this first lesson, you will have already created, tested, and edited some real JavaScript code.
Lesson 02 - Executing Scripts
Friday
Successful JavaScript programming requires controlling not just what a bit of JavaScript does but also when it should perform its task. This lesson will show you how that works and introduce you to the concept of event handling, which allows you to write code that responds to various events, such as clicking an item on the screen.
Week Two
Lesson 03 - The Document Object Model
Wednesday
This lesson is all about the Document Object Model (DOM), a set of rules and words you use to access and manipulate the elements of a web page. You'll also learn about variables, which are temporary placeholders for information that can vary. While such terms and concepts are often scary to the new developers, they actually turn out to be quite easy to understand once you remove the shroud of mystery.
Lesson 04 - Dates, Numbers, and Decision-Making
Friday
Code that makes decisions is the hallmark of all modern interactive websites and applications. In this lesson, you'll learn about JavaScript's ability to make if and else decisions (If this happens, do this, or else do this). You'll also learn about data types, strings, numbers, and dates, and how and why programming languages treat these types of information differently.
Week Three
Lesson 05 - Search My Site Code
Wednesday
This lesson will give you some Search My Site code. This is particularly handy for larger multipage sites, where users may want to search for a particular word or phrase within your site without having to go through the site one page at a time. Unlike some services that charge you money for this sort of thing, the method you'll learn here is free of charge. And as an added bonus, you'll learn how to add drop-down list controls to your pages.
Lesson 06 - Fun With Music
Friday
In this lesson, you'll learn to use JavaScript to add sound effects, background music, and custom music player controls to your web pages. You'll also learn how to set HTML attributes and CSS styles through JavaScript and how to test the user's browsers for compatibility with modern HTML5 features.
Week Four
Lesson 07 - Building a Picture Carousel
Wednesday
In this lesson, you'll start developing a picture carousel that allows users to click or cycle through thumbnail images, seeing an enlargement of one at a time. These can be a fun and useful addition to any website. Along the way, you'll learn some tips and tricks for using JavaScript with pictures and some new programming concepts like global variables and string manipulation.
Lesson 08 - Fun With Arrays and Loops
Friday
This lesson is all about arrays and loops. Those are the main constructs around which some of the best interactive elements, like slideshows and carousels, are built. In this lesson, you'll learn how to create your own JavaScript arrays and loops and start getting a handle on how you can apply them toward building more interactive web pages.
Week Five
Lesson 09 - Timers and Transition Effects
Wednesday
Bringing motion to web pages requires controlling the speed at which things happen. This lesson is about the two main ways you can control speed: JavaScript timers and CSS transitions. You'll also see how you can use JavaScript to trigger and control CSS transitions, which allows you to get some cool effects with minimal coding.
Lesson 10 - Introducing jQuery
Friday
Because JavaScript is such a popular language, people have written many libraries to extend and simplify its use. One of the most widely used and well known is jQuery. In this lesson, you'll learn what jQuery is and how to start using it in your own websites.
Week Six
Lesson 11 - Creating Collapsible Panels and Accordions
Wednesday
In this lesson, you'll build on what you learned last time about jQuery to add some powerful new techniques to your arsenal. Specifically, you'll see how you can use jQuery to create collapsible panel and accordion controls. These are custom controls that allow you to create more modern-looking websites in which users can click to expand information, making your site more efficient, effective, and easier to use on touch screens.
Lesson 12 - Using jQuery Plugins
Friday
jQuery is more than just a JavaScript library. It's a complete ecosystem that includes lots of prewritten code commonly referred to as jQuery plugins. There are thousands of free plugins available, and they provide for all kinds of slideshows, carousels, touchscreen interfaces, and countless other features that you can add to your own creations, for free, with minimal fuss. In this lesson, you'll learn how to find jQuery plugins and incorporate them into your own site.