Danny Goodman

Last updated

Danny Goodman is a computer programmer, technology consultant, and an author of over three dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles on computer-related topics. He is best known as the author of The Complete HyperCard Handbook (1987, Bantam Books, 650,000 copies in print), The JavaScript Bible (1996, IDG Books, 500,000 copies in print), and Dynamic HTML (1998, O'Reilly & Associates, 100,000 copies in print). His The Complete AppleScript Handbook (1993, Random House) is also notable as an important early work on the AppleScript programming language.

Contents

Goodman began writing about electronics and computers in the late 1970s, and became a full-time author in 1981. In 1987, the first edition of the highly acclaimed The Complete HyperCard Handbook was published. This influential work was once cited as being "the best selling Macintosh book and fastest selling computer book in history".[ citation needed ]

Having received critical acclaim with his Macintosh-related works, [1] especially on scripting via HyperCard and AppleScript, he turned his attention to the new scripting language of the Internet, JavaScript, and related technologies such as HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. His articles on the websites of Netscape, Apple Computer, and O'Reilly Media have been popular and noted for being accessible to both experts and non-professionals. In particular, his better known works have covered important techniques for achieving compatible cross-browser scripting solutions, dealing with the many differences of the major browsers Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and others; as well as discussing cross-platform issues involving the Macintosh, Windows, and Unix environments.

Goodman has written a few apps for the iPhone, namely iFeltThat (earthquake maps) and BeaconAid-HF (for radio frequency monitoring).

Goodman was born in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to San Francisco in 1983. He has a BA and M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Classical Antiquity.

Awards

Related Research Articles

Document Object Model Convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents

The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an XML or HTML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed.

JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. JavaScript is high-level, often just-in-time compiled, and multi-paradigm. It has curly-bracket syntax, dynamic typing, prototype-based object-orientation, and first-class functions.

HyperCard Hypermedia system for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers

HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web.

Netscape Navigator Web browser

Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s, but by around 2003 its use had almost disappeared. This was partly because the Netscape Corporation did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical innovation in the late 1990s.

HyperTalk is a discontinued high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. Because the main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, HyperTalk programmers were usually called "authors" and the process of writing programs was known as "scripting". HyperTalk scripts resembled written English and used a logical structure similar to that of the Pascal programming language.

A computing platform or digital platform is the environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying software, as long as the program code is executed with it. Computing platforms have different abstraction levels, including a computer architecture, an OS, or runtime libraries. A computing platform is the stage on which computer programs can run.

AppleScript Scripting language

AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. that facilitates automated control over scriptable Mac applications. First introduced in System 7, it is currently included in all versions of macOS as part of a package of system automation tools. The term "AppleScript" may refer to the language itself, to an individual script written in the language, or, informally, to the macOS Open Scripting Architecture that underlies the language.

Rhino is a JavaScript engine written fully in Java and managed by the Mozilla Foundation as open source software. It is separate from the SpiderMonkey engine, which is also developed by Mozilla, but written in C++ and used in Mozilla Firefox.

SuperCard

SuperCard is a high-level development environment that runs on Macintosh computers, under OS 8 and 9, and OS X. It is inspired by HyperCard, but includes a richer language, a full GUI toolkit, and native color.

<i>The Lost Treasures of Infocom</i>

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a 1991 compilation of 20 previously-released interactive fiction games developed by Infocom. It was published by Activision for MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, and Apple IIGS versions. It was later re-released on CD-ROM, and in 2012 on iOS.

Adobe Shockwave is a discontinued multimedia platform for building interactive multimedia applications and video games. Developers originate content using Adobe Director and publish it on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a web browser on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. MacroMind originated the technology; Macromedia acquired MacroMind and developed it further, releasing Shockwave Player in 1995. Adobe then acquired Shockwave with Macromedia in 2005. Shockwave supports raster graphics, basic vector graphics, 3D graphics, audio, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo.

Internet Explorer for Mac OS X Web browser by Microsoft from 1996 to 2003

Internet Explorer for Mac OS X is a proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform to browse web pages. Initial versions were developed from the same code base as Internet Explorer for Windows. Later versions diverged, particularly with the release of version 5 which included the cutting edge, fault-tolerant and highly standards-compliant Tasman layout engine.

Stevenote Keynote speeches given by Steve Jobs

Stevenote is a colloquial term for keynote speeches given by Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, at events such as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Macworld Expo, and Apple Expo. Because most Apple product releases were first shown to the public at these keynotes, "Stevenotes" caused substantial swings in Apple's stock price.

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is an application programming interface (API) that allows browser plugins to be developed. It was first developed for Netscape browsers, starting in 1995 with Netscape Navigator 2.0, but was subsequently adopted by other browsers. With the advent of HTML5, all major web browsers have removed support for 3rd party NPAPI plugins for security reasons.

JavaScript OSA,, is a freeware inter-process communication scripting language for the Macintosh computer.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

An Internet operating system, or Internet OS, is any type of operating system designed to run all of its applications and services through an Internet client, generally a web browser. The advantages of such an OS would be that it would run on a thin client, allowing cheaper, more easily manageable computer systems; it would require all applications to be designed on cross-platform, open standards; and would not tie a user's applications, documents, and preferences to a single computer, but rather place them in the Internet cloud. The Internet OS has also been promoted as the perfect type of platform for software as a service.

Netscape Navigator 2

Netscape Navigator 2 was a proprietary web browser released by Netscape Communications Corporation as its flagship product. Versions were available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, SunOS, and FreeBSD.

References

  1. "PERSONAL COMPUTERS; Summer Books for Computer Nerds", The New York Times , August 4, 1992. Retrieved November 16, 2013