Coding All-in-One For Dummies

Nikhil Abraham is the CFO of Udacity, an education company that teaches technology skills that help launch or advance a career. Prior to joining Udacity, Nik worked at Codecademy where he taught beginning coders across a variety of professions. He is also author of Coding For Dummies and Getting a Coding Job For Dummies.

Introduction 1 About This Book 2 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 4 Where to Go from Here 4 Book 1: Getting Started with Coding 5 Chapter 1: What Is Coding? 7 Defining What Code Is 8 Understanding What Coding Can Do for You 9 Surveying the Types of Programming Languages 13 Taking a Tour of a Web App Built with Code 16 Chapter 2: Programming for the Web 19 Displaying Web Pages on Your Desktop and Mobile Device 20 Coding Web Applications 26 Coding Mobile Applications 28 Chapter 3: Becoming a Programmer 33 Writing Code Using a Process 33 Picking Tools for the Job 38 Book 2: Career Building with Coding 43 Chapter 1: Exploring Coding Career Paths 45 Augmenting Your Existing Job 46 Finding a New Coding Job 52 Chapter 2: Exploring Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees 59 Getting a College Degree 60 Enrolling in an Advanced Degree Program 65 Interning to Build Credibility 68 Chapter 3: Training on the Job 73 Taking a Work Project to the Next Level 74 Learning on the Job and after Work 75 Freelancing to Build Confidence and Skills 79 Transitioning to a New Role 80 Chapter 4: Coding Career Myths 83 Educational Myths 83 Career Myths 87 Book 3: Basic Web Coding 93 Chapter 1: Exploring Basic HTML 95 What Does HTML Do? 95 Understanding HTML Structure 96 Getting Familiar with Common HTML Tasks and Tags 102 Styling Me Pretty 107 Building Your First Website Using HTML 109 Chapter 2: Getting More Out of HTML 113 Organizing Content on the Page 113 Listing Data 115 Putting Data in Tables 118 Filling Out Forms 124 Practicing More with HTML 127 Chapter 3: Getting Stylish with CSS 129 What Does CSS Do? 129 CSS Structure 131 Common CSS Tasks and Selectors 135 Styling Me Pretty 146 Chapter 4: Next Steps with CSS 151 Styling (More) Elements on Your Page 152 Selecting Elements to Style 157 Aligning and Laying Out Your Elements 163 Writing More Advanced CSS 172 Chapter 5: Building Floating Page Layouts 173 Creating a Basic Two-Column Design 173 Building a Three-Column Design 185 Building a Fixed-Width Layout 193 Building a Centered Fixed-Width Layout 196 Chapter 6: Using Alternative Positioning 201 Working with Absolute Positioning 201 Managing z-index 206 Building a Page Layout with Absolute Positioning 208 Creating a More Flexible Layout 212 Exploring Other Types of Positioning 216 Flexible Box Layout Model 221 Book 4: Advanced Web Coding 231 Chapter 1: Working Faster with Twitter Bootstrap 233 Figuring Out What Bootstrap Does 234 Installing Bootstrap 235 Understanding the Layout Options 236 Coding Basic Web Page Elements 243 Build the Airbnb Home Page 247 Chapter 2: Adding in JavaScript 249 What Does JavaScript Do? 249 Understanding JavaScript Structure 251 Coding Common JavaScript Tasks 253 Writing Your First JavaScript Program 263 Using JavaScript Libraries 267 Chapter 3: Understanding Callbacks and Closures 269 What Are Callbacks? 269 Understanding Closures 274 Using Closures 277 Chapter 4: Embracing AJAX and JSON 279 Working behind the Scenes with AJAX 279 Putting Objects in Motion with JSON 289 Chapter 5: jQuery 295 Writing More and Doing Less 295 Getting Started with jQuery 296 The jQuery Object 297 Is Your Document Ready? 298 Using jQuery Selectors 298 Changing Things with jQuery 300 Events 302 Effects 305 AJAX 309 Book 5: Creating Web Applications 311 Chapter 1: Building Your Own App 313 Building a Location-Based Offer App 313 Following an App Development Process 315 Planning Your First Web Application 316 Exploring the Overall Process 317 Meeting the People Who Bring a Web App to Life 319 Chapter 2: Researching Your First Web Application 325 Dividing the App into Steps 326 Identifying Research Sources 333 Researching the Steps in the McDuck's Offer App 335 Choosing a Solution for Each Step 338 C