Learn JavaScript In a Weekend w/CD

Rating:
Summary: This could have been a much better book.
Review: Following the pattern of the "In a Weekend" books, this book is divided into a Friday night session followed by morning, afernoon and evening sessions for Saturday and Sunday. The author suggests a familiarity with HTML before undertaking this book and recommends "Learn HTML In a Weekend" by Steve Callihan (I've read the Mac edition). He then spends around thirty pages on a review of HTML. Among JavaScript topics covered are objects, strings, functions, controlling the browser status bar, and creating roll-over effects. Along the way you will leaarn to make a JavaScript "clock" and how to "bake" and check for a cookie. Surprisingly I don't think Mr. Ford ever makes a really convincing argument for the use of JavaScript. Add to that "typos" and the fact that the CD ROM won't work as advertised on the Mac (although it does seem to run with out incident on a PC) and you get the idea the book could have been better. Other issues I have with this book are: 1.A good case is made by the author for using Netscape Navigator along with this "course" with most of the examples illustrating Navigator but his "Nav" preference is not mentioned until later in the book. It would have been better to state this earlier. 2.Mr Ford says you should explicitly declare variables, but in most of his examples he does not. Finally, if the example set by the book he recommends ("...HTML In a Weekend") was followed--that of diagraming each command as it is introduced and walking the reader through each example this book would be less frustrating. All in all I think this book might be suited to a classroom enviroment where an instructor could answer questions and point out errors. You can learn some JavaScript from this book, but is more frustrating than it needs to be. I was disappointed.