This book is a foundational guide to modern web development - from protocols to front-end interactivity, grounded in real-world architecture and time-tested pedagogy.
Not limited to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it's a comprehensive guide to the concepts of web development, and how those concepts span across frameworks, languages, and layers of modern full stack applications.
You’ll cover:
- Networks & Protocols – Learn what really happens when you click a link, from TCP handshakes to HTTP requests.
- Markup & Hypertext – Go beyond tags and learn how HTML works as the structural backbone of the web.
- JavaScript (Server & Client – Explore the language in a way that emphasizes conceptual understanding over syntax memorization.
- Asynchronous Programming – Master callbacks, promises, and async/await as you build responsive, concurrent systems.
- Databases & State – Learn how modern web apps manage persistent state with relational databases and sessions.
- Templating & Frameworks – Understand how server-side rendering works from first principles, then leverage Pug and Express.
- Styling & Layout – Dive deep into CSS, including Flexbox, Grid, and responsive design, before layering in frameworks like Bootstrap.
- Client-side Development – Manipulate the DOM, handle events, make AJAX requests, and build interactive SPAs with Vue.js.
- Security, Deployment & Infrastructure – Round out your knowledge with practical insight into authentication, encryption, and modern DevOps topics.
Written for college students, instructors, and professional developers alike, Foundations of Web Development takes a pedagogically sound, hands-on approach to learning how the web actually works, from the ground up. You’ll begin with the fundamentals: internet protocols, TCP/IP, sockets, and HTTP. From there, you’ll build up a working knowledge of web standards like HTML and CSS, and then dive into backend programming using JavaScript in the Node.js runtime - not because it's the only option, but because it minimizes language overhead and maximizes focus on the architecture and ideas that matter.
You won’t learn just one way to build a web app. You’ll build your own framework before adopting industry-standard tools like Express, gaining insight into routing, middleware, templating, databases, and state management. You’ll incrementally evolve a single example - a number guessing game - through nine iterations, each showcasing a deeper or more advanced feature, from form handling to RESTful APIs to reactive front ends built with Vue.js.
