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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

List Price: $44.95
Your Price: $29.67
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best reference on JavaScript I have ever seen
Review: I have read many books on JavaScript before but this is by far the most comprehansive guide to the scripting language. This book is not for beginners.
I use it as a reference guide. If you know the object's name or the method's name on either client side or server side, you can just look it up in this book's index section and it will reference you to a particular page with detailed explonations and more often then not with examples.
Absolutely love this book

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hard core Javascript theory.....at last.
Review: After trying to learn javascript from the visual series "javascript for the world wide web, 3rd ed" (and being thoroughly disappointed), I finally have found a book that describes the fundamentals of the javascript language in detail. This book explains from an academic perspective the rules, usage, and syntax of javascript. It leads the reader into the depths of how javascript implements an object-oriented paradigm without getting too esoteric. It can be difficult reading at times, but the true nature of javascript programming is not that of a simple little scripting language as some would have you believe. The coding examples could have been better, with more full-sized scripts showing the language in action instead of the numerous 1-4 line code snipets. The one big distraction I noticed was the seemingly constant references to netscape navigator, and all the bugs present in older versions of that browser. Unfortunately, this dated the book and tended to highlight a bias when the author would have been better off staying with the academic focus. Even still, the majority of the theory is unaffected by nav or ie, and the reference section is essential for any serious javascript developer. It is noted that this book was copyright 1998, so "cutting edge" javascript extensions will not be included, but the fundamental theory behind the language remains intact. With the combination of this book (theory and reference) and the visual series book (cutesy web page tricks), I can finally get on with the task of finishing my web site.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The book for the novice and experienced JS programmer
Review: This book is excellent. Helped me within hours start programming in JS. Excellent reference that includes also the relevant html fundamnentals a programmer needs to know. JS without html is hanging in the air. The author realized that and delivered something very useful to the community.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT THE JAVAN RHINOSEOUROS!
Review: Great no-nonsense JavaScript Book which contains both theory, tutorial and a comprehensive JS reference. Covers JavaScript up until version 1.5. This is no disneyland stuff, this is hardcore JavaScript stuff that explains both the inner and outer workings of JavaScript and does so in more detail than any other book I've seen.
If (you want some disneyland typeof JavaScript){ you should check out the Visual Quickstart Guide's version, or something similar, and there you can learn JavaScript in a softer manner, and when you're ready for more, or are curious about the more fundamental aspects of the language, then this is the right book for that purpose. This book takes a very professional approach to JavaScript; treating it like a serious programming language, as opposed to silly toddler language, and it also deals with what JavaScript shares with other programming languages in terms of its syntax, impementation and purposes. And so you will eventually get a much more concrete idea of what JavaScript really is, how it works, the potentials and limitations it has, and so on. Again, this is JavaScript a la serious business, so if you're new to JavaScript, warm up elsewhere before getting your hands dirty with this one.
}
else
{David is a good author. He seems really dedicated to teaching you the darned language for real.
}

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I Found Goodman's Work More Useful
Review: If your use of Javascript is primarily for DHTML on web pages then get these other 2 O'Reilly books by Goodman first in this order -- "Javascript & DHTML Cookbook" and "Dynamic HTML The Definitive Reference". These books cover not only Javascript, but also style sheets, HTML, and browser object models that are needed to make javascript work in a web page environment.

The first book by Goodman is all examples, with explanations of concepts included within each example, with the examples in order of increasing complexity and building on previous examples. Extremely helpful in accomplishing real work on real web sites, much more than Flanagan's Javascript reference guide, especially since Flanagans guide has very few examples.

The second Goodman book is a condensed tutorial on DHTML concepts (Javascript, style sheets, the browser object model, and HTML) combined with reference sections on these subjects. Javascript is just a piece of the web page puzzle. The Goodman books put all the pieces together while Flanagan just covers Javascript.

If all you need is Javascript get Flanagan. If you need Javascript for working with web pages get Goodman. If I had to choose only one book for using Javascript on web pages I would choose Goodman's "Cookbook".


Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good - but examples use Internet Explorer extensions
Review: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is an excellent reference book. Unfortunately many (if not all) of the examples use Internet Explorer extensions instead of standard methods/properties. For a newbie this can be frustrating when the example in the book does not work. And even then I discovered I had to make changes to some of the examples to work on Internet Explorer 6.0. If the examples used the standard (and only the standard) methods and properties this headache would be reduced and, maybe, eliminated.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another great one from Flanagan
Review: If you're already an experienced programmer, it can be frustrating trying to find a good book on JavaScript (aka JScript, aka ECMAScript, aka ECMA-262). A lot of books out there are aimed at HTML developers, maybe even graphic designers. Many such users have little or no real programming experience, and maybe no real interest. Books for that audience are user-friendly, filled with useful examples, and low on scary-sounding technical terms. In other words, almost useless.

Flanagan has good credentials as a technical writer, and as a highly technical writer. He really knows what software engineers look for - trust me, it's not what a graphic designer looks for.

This starts with a clear, methodical description of the language. Flanagan goes through all the language basics, pointing out where JavaScript differs form languages like Java, C#, or C++. The differences are numerous. For example, JavaScript has typed data, but not typed variables. It's object oriented, but doesn't have classes. It's an interpreted language, not compiled, and that opens up generative programming possibilities that reflection APIs can't approach.

After the language itself, Flanagan presents it in the client-side HTML context, where it appears most often. That's about 20% of the book. It goes over all the common HTML features, and shows how JavaScript can add dynamics or configurability to most HTML features. The last part of this section discusses XML and the DOM model. It does not yet discuss the E4X standard, ECMAScript for XML, the new ECMA-357 standard. As of this writing, the standard has only been out for three months, though. I'm sure Flanagan will catch up to it soon.

The book's remaining three sections cover the language's basic APIs, the APIs needed in the client-side HTML context, and the DOM model. The first two are fundamental to any non-trivial use of the language, the last is the programming model that gives access to XML or XHTML in a rational, predictable way.

JavaScript has a number of very different user communities, with different needs when it comes to language documentation. This isn't a cut&paster's book, and is nothing at all like a training guide. It's a reference manual. If you're a serious techie, then this is the book for you.

//wiredweird

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great
Review: Brilliant exposition. The author is a great teacher. He builds idea upon idea, pointing out the basics and explaining how they fit together. For example, Chapter 8 ("Objects") is beautiful; it enhanced my understanding of Java, in addition to JavaScript, by providing thoughtfully crafted, meaningful context around the subject of object-oriented languages.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best reference on JavaScript I have ever seen
Review: As a long time C++ programmer, I found this book to be neither too hard or too easy. Readers with no programming experience at all might have a harder time with the text, but if you have any kind of programming background, the text will serve you well. As a reference, the text is second to none. Even the DOM reference is one of the best out there.


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