I suck at programming (xmlhttprequest)

[SoundTheSurrender]

I've been on and off trying to learn how to program. The whole language I seem confident in is VB.NET but I want to expand.

Currently I'm trying to do java and I'm lost. Is there any books out there that you would recommend?

What I'm trying to do is make a OS X widget for Netflix that will parse the movies that are in que.

As far as I understand, I need to use the xmlhttprequest in java which can read HTML. Beyond this I am clueless. Any pointers?

 

[aceO07]

Do you mean xmlhttprequest in javascript? You should read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest and there's a few tutorials at the bottom that might be good to look at. Or just research AJAX in general and any tutorials associated with it.

I did a few pages using ajax last year and it wasn't too bad. Just copy the examples and once you get that working, just modify existing code as you go along and learn new things.

 

[Noobsa44]

Just to be clear, are you talking about Java or JavaScript?

If you are actually referring to Java, then I suggest you at least take a look at this site, which has a great deal of helpful information on Java in general. It may not help you with your current problem, but I found it very useful in discussing subjects such as ints vs Integers.

If you are talking about JavaScript, I'm afraid I just don't know enough to make any good recommendations other than to suggest using Firefox for debugging it (from what I hear, FF has lots of JavaScript testing tools out there if you look for them) and sciTE for a simple IDE for developing it.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

I'm using DashCode which uses Java, I assume it's script.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Noobsa44]

After a quick web search I found Apple's page on dashcode. It appears it uses JavaScript, not Java. Also, a simple way to tell the difference is JavaScript has the extension .js and Java typically uses the extensions .java and .jar.

JavaScript is typically used for web development, so I my only suggest is you look at various websites that use it for web development, even if you're not really using it for web development.

 

[aceO07]

It seems like dashcode uses html, javascript, css.. The most important thing for you to learn is javascript. The html and css will help you make the widget look nicer.

I recommend that you start with a quick learning session on javascript.. learn how to parse text in javascript.. then learn xmlhttprequest. After that combine what you've learn and add in some html and css. Good luck.