Rating:  Summary: ONLY COPY AND PASTE Review: I think this book is for the people who dont have a clue about any programming language and just want to know what the so called javascript is. I am an experienced programmer and I bought this book because I wanted to learn Javascript, instead I just got a book that says "You do this by putting this on the Web" Why you have to do that ? Figure it out by yourself. Is a "Quick" Start, so quick that at the end you dont learn anything. I now have it as a Quick Reference, if I want to do something just go to the book and copy the code from there, and no idea why.
Rating:  Summary: Best Javascript Book Review: Great, the way the authors explain is amazing. A great feature is how the authors name functions and variables to show what their script is actually doing. It's fairly short, to the point, and an amazing reference, too.
Rating:  Summary: Remeber, it's a "quick" start Review: The Visual Quickstart series of books have changed my life; honestly. I'm 23 and loving my job as web designer. If it weren't for Elizabeth Castro, I would probably still be doing tech support. That aside, remember that these books are indeed a "quick" start which is different from a 101-level class in a subject. The book dives right into helpful scripts like browser-type detection and status bar messages but doesn't necessarily explain how to do a while loop or even basic syntax. This book, like the others in the series, will get your feet and give you a pretty good idea of whether or not it's the right technology for you.One thing I really like is the simplified version of complicated scripts. For instance, the rollover button script that Dreamweaver uses has a lot of extra code that, at least to a beginner, makes no sense and seems unnecessary. When I looked for an alternative script on the web, I found an even more complicated one. The script the book shows you is *so* easy and it works! Why doesn't everybody use something this simple? Anyway, I look at all of the VQS books as starters. You're going to have to get a more advanced book if you want to do anything heavy duty...
Rating:  Summary: Not meant for advanced programmers Review: JAVASCRIPT FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB is a good book for teaching Javascript programming to people who have no real interest in learning how to program. As one has probably gathering from surfing the web, there are a lot of Javascript-enabled Web pages put together by people who have absolutely no idea about how to program a script. This book was made for people like that, who have no desire to move beyond Javascript into the world of more advance programming languages (and contains a lot of stuff that would make those badly designed Web pages work a whole lot better). It's a slim volume (252 pages plus appendixes), so you shouldn't be expecting to find very detailed coverage of the language here. It concentrates on the material that the majority of web-page designers are going to be using, so unless you're planning on becoming an expert in Javascript, the information provided here should be more than adequate for anything that you want to do. Keep in mind that this is a book primarily for beginners to the field. You don't even have to know much HTML, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it forces the book to explain most of the functionality that you will need to know, but a curse because it holds back from dealing with more advanced functions. Hardcore, experienced programmers are not the book's intended audience, so the gaps in its information are not as harmful as they would otherwise be. The subjects that it does cover are explained reasonably well and should be simple enough for most people to understand. Unfortunately, there are a handful of places where the book assumes the reader to have more knowledge than a beginner would likely have. To an experienced programmer, these omissions would not be the slightest problem, but the book seems to be geared more towards novices. Basic programming concepts like loops and conditionals are mentioned, and briefly explained, but don't provide quite enough elaboration for someone who has never had any experience with such things before. This really only happens in a few isolated areas, but it could probably frustrate a beginner. The major topics that this book covers are: images, frames, browser windows, cookies, forms, plug-ins, and dynamic Web pages. The book covers other areas as well as providing a basic introduction to basic programming languages that may not be quite in-depth as it should be. It runs the risk of falling between two stools; the advanced user will definitely find this inadequate, but the novice may find a few parts too complicated. Fortunately, gaps in the fundamentals are few and far between. Once the book gets into the heart of its Javascript coverage, the beginning programmer will find lots to learn. If you just want to know about how to put Javascript bells and whistles on your Web page, then you could do a lot worse than this book. It's far too superficial for the experienced programmer, or for the reader planning on gaining more depth; so if you fall into those categories, then you pay want to purchase something else (I'd recommend O'Reilly's JAVASCRIPT: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE). But for the subjects that the book does explain, it does a fairly good job. Recommended mainly for novices, but also for intermediates who only have select uses for Web-based Javascript.
Rating:  Summary: A great book for web designers Review: This book is a great one for web designers who need to know how to put Javascript into their code. It gives good instructions and picture examples of how the code should turn out. It also has a thing in the back to referrence Cascading Style Sheets and other codes you use in web design. This is a definite must-have for web designers!
Rating:  Summary: Mixed review Review: On the plus side, the explanations are fairly straightforward (my eyes didn't glaze over like they normally do when I read javascript books). On the minus side, the code in the book sometimes leaves out itty-bitty stuff like semi-colons which will render your code worthless. It's best to go to the site and download the code rather than type in the code as written in the book. Then you won't spend time hitting yourself over the head wondering why your code doesn't work. I was able to understand what was going on in the explanations, but I wasn't necessarily able to modify code that relied on mathematical random generator formulas.
Rating:  Summary: Poorly formatted code, doesn't teach concepts Review: I tried to use this book in my classes but found it lacking. It presents a lot of techniques but doesn't teach the concepts well. There is a lot of code but the formatting is inconsistent with haphazard line breaks and wraps. Many of my students inadvertently entered extra line breaks which made their code break. For code intensive books, the full width of the page is needed and the display should mirror that of a typical text editor. All the HTML tags in the book are in upper case whereas students today need to get in the habit of writing lowercase tags for compatibility with XHTML and XML in the future. If you are serious about learning good programming habits, this book is not for you.
Rating:  Summary: a great starting place Review: This book is a great introduction to Javascript. It gives simple examples of things you can do, and gives little add-ons to allow you to build real world functionality into your web site. A few more pages and another concept or two, and this is 5 stars...
Rating:  Summary: great for javascript beginners! Review: just a quick note to say your sites/books are a great source of instruction and reference to the javascript beginner... i've learnt a lot from them!
Rating:  Summary: Depending on your skill level, can be very useful Review: Don't judge a book by its title. This book's title gives the false appearance of being a tutorial, but it really is not. Previous JavaScript experiences proved very useful to me in understanding this book. When I bought this book, I knew just a little bit about JavaScript, the basic principles and what not. After this quick read I was able to write some of my own simple JavaScripts, and to understand the basics of what other people's scripts were and how they worked. Granted, I agree that this is not the best book for the complete newbie to JavaScript. I do, however, believe that it is useful if you have a little past experience with the scripting language and want to learn basic principles and how it all works together. What I got from the book was that it gives you simple code mixed with HTML, explains bits and pieces of it, and expects you to fill in the rest. I didn't mind this at all, as it provided somewhat of a challenge. However, I do realize that this is not generally a good characteristic of a programming book. I was also able to follow it better because I had quite a bit of experience with other languages. To sum it all up, I would say that if you have dabbled in JavaScript a little before, say you know how to make rollovers and such, that this is a good book to sharpen your JS abilities and to help better understand the big picture. I would not straight out recommend this to the newbie though.
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