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.

New features of IE10

With the release of the Windows 8 Developer preview on Wednesday at the BUILD conference, the third preview of IE10 was released. I had never expected that this would bring that many new features. Some of the features were already available at the html5labs, but needed sever installations to get it work. But from now all these features are released in the new preview of IE10. Even features who weren't available at html5labs are added.

From now it will be possible to build web applications that will work online as well offline. The API for this is the HTML Application Cache. In a manifest file you describe all the resources (HTML files, JS files, CSS files, Images, …) you need to let your application work offline. For storing your data offline, we now have 2 possibilities. We have the Local storage we can use to save key/value pairs. This is handy if we save small amounts of data and do not need a structured way to be saved or need to query on data in the value. The second possibility is the use of IndexedDB. This is an offline database that runs in the client. You can’t use SQL to query on it, but it has a set of interfaces that provide methods to create, read, update and delete your data and structure.

Another feature that was available at html5labs was web sockets. Web sockets enable you to use TCP to communicate between your browser and the webserver. On this way we can save a lot of traffic when build applications who need frequent polling to get there data. When using HTTP we are always sending an HTTP header. In a web socket message we send only add 0x00 at the begin of the message and 0xFF at the end.

With the history API we will be able to manipulate the URL without having a page refresh or navigation. This way we can use AJAX to give the user a fluent way to work with your application (without page refresh) and adjust the URL at the same time. This enables the user to move back and forward in your web application who uses AJAX.

To improve the performance of your web applications, IE added the possibility to run scripts Asynchronously and the use of Web workers to make your web application multithreaded in your browser.

The File API provides the web developers a secure way to access files on the local machine. This way the user can manipulate local files without having to upload it to the server.

Other improvements are:

• Rich Visual Effects: CSS Text Shadow, CSS 3D Transforms, CSS3 Transitions and Animations, CSS3 Gradient, SVG Filter Effects
• Sophisticated Page Layouts: CSS3 for publication quality page layouts and application UI (CSS3 grid, flexbox, multi-column, positioned floats, regions, and hyphenation), HTML5 Forms, input controls, and validation
• Enhanced Web Programming Model: Better offline applications through local storage with IndexedDB and the HTML5 Application Cache; Web Sockets, HTML5 History, Async scripts, HTML5 File APIs, HTML5 Drag-drop, HTML5 Sandboxing, Web workers, ES5 Strict mode support.