Chapter 8
Adding Functionality with jQuery and PHP
This page serves as the companion web page for Chapter 8 of Expression Web 4 Step by Step.
Expression Web 4 provides support not only for Microsoft technologies, but also for other popular web development tools. This chapter shows you how to take advantage of the jQuery JavaScript library and the web development language PHP using Expression Web 4.
After completing this chapter, you will be able to:
- Use jQuery in Expression Web
- Use Expression Web’s PHP Tools
Using jQuery in Expression Web
JQuery is a lightweight JavaScript Library that makes authoring JavaScript much faster and easier than ever. It’s currently very popular among designers and developers alike because of its ease of use, flexibility, and plug-in ecosystem.
When you complete this chapter segment you will be able to link your page to a jQuery library, and use the jQuery features and plug-ins in your page
Resources
- jQuery
- This is the Official jQuery Site. It's a great place to begin learning this fantastic technique.
- DotNetCurry
- This article provides additional technical information about dynamically altering link targets.
- 51 Tips, Tricks and Recipes with jQuery and ASP.NET Controls by Suprotim Agarwal
- While this chapter focuses on PHP and jQuery this book is worth mentioning, especially in the context of Expression Web.
- Validate My Form
- This is the form validation plug-in you used in this chapter.
- Glimmer (Download) (Review)
- This is an interesting free application that assists you in creating jQuery effects, animations, and other scripting functions.
Using Expression Web's PHP Tools
PHP is a powerful scripting language that is platform independent. As long as your host has PHP installed on your server, you can use it regardless of server type. When a browser requests a PHP page, the PHP script is executed on the server and the resulting HTML is sent to the browser. PHP pages may contain text, HTML, and script blocks and offer similar functionality to "Legacy ASP” pages.
In this portion of the chapter, you will become familiar with the Expression Web 4 tools for PHP and how to use them. You will use PHP to create a list of all the images in a folder automatically. You will also learn how to work with PHP functions, variables, and includes in Expression Web 4. At the end of the chapter, you will find references to more information about programming in PHP.
When you complete this chapter segment you will be able to use Expression Web's PHP tools
Resources
- php.net
- This PHP group’s official site. Not only can you download PHP executables to run on your computer, but a full site of documentation, help, and a full complement of developer resources.
- Tip If you’re looking for quick information about a topic in PHP, you can enter the domain as such: php.net/echo or php.net/include. If there’s a page for that topic, it will be displayed; if there isn’t a page to display, you’ll automatically see search results for the topic in question.
- This PHP group’s official site. Not only can you download PHP executables to run on your computer, but a full site of documentation, help, and a full complement of developer resources.
- sitepoint.com
- This Australian site is full of practical examples for using PHP code. There are articles from both a design and a programming perspective. They also have several books on the topic of PHP.
- php.resourceindex.com
- This is a very large index of "everything PHP,” from completed scripts you can use, to communities of people using and learning PHP.
Key Points
- Using jQuery in Expression Web can help you enhance your pages with client-side
functionality. - Using the Expression Web PHP Tools can help you add server-side functionality to your
pages. - jQuery plug-ins add tremendous functionality.
- Designers can use jQuery and PHP code together to create interesting and reusable
functionality.
