Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist

As of today, I am a Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist. I took the 70-480 exam and passed with a score of 760. Tough I already have quite some experience with HTML5 and JavaScript, the exam was tougher than I expected. That is why I wanted to make this post so every who is thinking about doing this exam gets a head start. Also every one who wants to do the exam, can do this for free until 31/03/2013. More information about this you can find here.

To start, Microsoft provides a one day online course to prepare for the 70-480. This course can be found on the Microsoft virtual academy. On that site you can find courses for several technologies. These courses are divided into several modules and every module has a survey you can take when you completed the resources provided. This is a good starting point if you want to study for the 70-480, but it is certainly not enough. The course is too brief.

If I look back at the exam, jQuery is very important. In a lot of questions jQuery was used in the code examples and solutions. So make sure you know how jQuery works and how to use it. Also a great part of the questions handled about AJAX request. It is definitely worth to inspect the AJAX implementation of jQuery with all its options and events. I got several questions about it.

A second great part of the questions handled about forms and validations. Make sure you know how regular expressions work. I had at least two questions that handled about choosing the right regex. And to complete the HTML5 element part I got some cases in which I note which HTML5 structure element I should use.

The questions about CSS handled the most about positioning, the box model, display modes, media queries and selectors.

The last part was about JavaScript with the focus on the object oriented aspect and closures. It is also a important to know how event handling works in JavaScript. For the API’s the most important ones are Web workers, local/session storage. It is good to know how they work and how you can use them.

For every one who takes the challenge, I wish you good luck and I hope I provided some useful hints.

IndexedDBViewer: Take a look inside your indexedDB

Some days ago I released a new version of the IndexedDBViewer 1.1.0. The IndexedDBViewer is intended for web developers who want to sneak into their indexedDB database. It allows you to inspect the structure of your database as well as the data stored inside this structure. The difference with the previous version is that it no longer needs the jQueryUI library. This way I eliminated at least one reference. The following references are still necessary:

• jQuery (version 1.8.2 or higher)
• linq2indexedDB (version 1.0.19 or higher)
• indexedDBViewer (1.1.0 – JavaScript + css file)

If you are using nuget, you can get all the resource by searching for the indexedDBViewer.

The second major change is that the viewer can easily be added to an existing page. The only thing you need to do is add a div with “indexedDBViewer” as id and data-dbName attribute to pass the database you want to inspect. The rest will be handled by the script in the viewer

   1: <div id="indexedDBViewer" data-dbName="database name"></div>

Once this is done and you navigate to the page with the viewer, you will get the following result

In the bottom you will see the view appear. On the left pane you get an overview of the database structure. This a list with on top the name of the database. Under that you will find child nodes that represent the object stores present in the database. If we descend an other level we can see the indexes present on the object store. If you click on the “+” or “-“ next to the names, you can expand or hide the structure beneath.

If you click on the database name in the navigation pane, you will get information about the database and it’s structure.

• In the general block you will see the name of the database and the version it is currently in
  
• The object stores block gives you an overview of all the object stores present and how they are configured.
  
• The indexes block shows all the present indexes and how they are configured.

When you click on one of the object store names in the navigation pane, you will get all the data present in the object store. Because the data is saved as a key/value pair, you will see the key with his corresponding value. If the value is an object or contains objects, then you can inspect them by clicking on the “+” to expand and “-” to hide the details.

If you click on one of the index names in the navigation pane, you will get – similar as for object stores – all the data present in the object store. But in this case you will see a little more. Besides the key of the index and the value you will see the key the value has in the object store. This can be found under the “primary” key column.

As last there are some little extra features:

• If you click on the top border of the viewer and drag it up or down, then you can change the height of the viewer.
  
• if you click on the “-” in the right top of the viewer, you can hide the viewer. If you want it to appear again, then you have to click on the “+” on the right bottom of the page.

Conclusion

With this Chrome like indexedDBViewer you can inspect the structure of your database inclusive all data stored within it. This with the advantage that it runs inside the browser, so you can use it cross-browser.