Forms and Form Fields[27-09-2017]
Forms were introduced briefly in the previous chapter as a way to submit information provided by the user over HTTP. They were designed for a pre-JavaScript Web, assuming that interaction with the server always happens by navigating to a new page.
But their elements are part of the DOM like the rest of the page, and the DOM elements that represent form fields support a number of properties and events that are not present on other elements. These make it possible to inspect and control such input fields with JavaScript programs and do things such as adding functionality to a traditional form or using forms and fields as building blocks in a JavaScript application.
Implementation[19-03-2017]
Clicking the canvas will hand off the "mousedown" event to the currently selected tool, which can handle it in whichever way it chooses. The line drawing tool, for example, will listen for "mousemove" events until the mouse button is released and draw lines along the mouse’s path using the current color and brush size.
In JavaScript, a setter can be used to execute a function whenever a specified property is attempted to be changed. Setters are most often used in conjunction with getters to create a type of pseudo-property. It is not possible to simultaneously have a setter on a property that holds an actual value.
Sometimes it is desirable to allow access to a property that returns a dynamically computed value, or you may want to reflect the status of an internal variable without requiring the use of explicit method calls. In JavaScript, this can be accomplished with the use of a getter. It is not possible to simultaneously have a getter bound to a property and have that property actually hold a value, although it is possible to use a getter and a setter in conjunction to create a type of pseudo-property.
Property vs. Method[17-09-2015]
Some developers like to make a distinction when talking about a property access on an object, if the value being accessed happens to be a function. Because it's tempting to think of the function as belonging to the object, and in other languages, functions which belong to objects (aka, "classes") are referred to as "methods", it's not uncommon to hear, "method access" as opposed to "property access".
Every time you access a property on an object, that is a property access, regardless of the type of value you get back. If you happen to get a function from that property access, it's not magically a "method" at that point. There's nothing special (outside of possible implicit this binding as explained earlier) about a function that comes from a property access.