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Summary: One stop javasript Book
Review: There isn't really much to say about this book other than it has everything you want to know in it. Giving examples, clear instructions and great layout the book tops anything anyone else could dream of printing.
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Summary: A bit out-of-date
Review: The book has potential, but it lacks some code that would prove useful for ambitious programmers.
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Summary: Great for beginners who know HTML
Review: If you've been writing HTML for a while and want to get into javascripting this is a good start. You don't have to learn the language of javascript, but instead learn by doing some projects. The projects are really what most people want javscript for anyway: using forms, frames, cookies, and image rollovers. It helps to have a little programming background already. The fact that the book is a little out of date actually helps because everything covered has already been implemented in both browsers by now. One problem I had was the included CD which has the examples come up in HTML, but it comes up as source text instead of a working example. It should have both (or just the working example since you can always view source on your own). Since the data on the CD is only about 3 or 4 MB it's not like they were short on space. If you will do a lot of javscripting you will probably need to buy a more complete reference eventually.
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Summary: This Book Helped Me Design My Webpage!
Review: It's great, very helpful, and expanded my knowledge of HTML all together
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Summary: Not your average Web Builder book
Review: Most books I've read/looked at were just HTML tutorials. Why buy a book and not have to read half of it? This book skips the basics and jumps into the coding. It's not for beginners and probably not for the pros either. If you're good at HTML and want to take your pages to the "next step" I would suggest this book.
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Summary: I want my REFUND!!!
Review: 1) Almost ALL example sites in the book are outdated! When u are asked to refer to a site, most likely it is GONE already! 2) The CD does not include all the files. Missing gif files, html files..... You can't run all the tutorial. Someone was in a hurry to make a buck and forgot to put all the files together. For a book that relies on sample sites and tutorial, this book fails to deliever fully. Shop around for a better book if u are serious.
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Summary: Good for specific scripts, but teaches little
Review: This book is great for stealing script examples, but it doesn't teach you enough about the language for you to write good scripts by yourself. I found many typos in this book which leads me to beleive that it wasn't edited well. If you are looking for specific scripts like a date & time script, or something like that, this book is great; but if that's all your looking for, don't spend the money, get on a chat room. If you are an experienced JavaScripter, this book might be good to give you ideas.
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Summary: An excellent, practical guide to Javascript!
Review: When I recently had to solve a whole bunch of problems on a web site using Javascript, I used this book plus "The Javascript Bible" and "Javascript the Definitive Guide".What I found was that after getting the technical background in great depth from the other books I always ended up using the examples and ideas from THIS book because the author is able to distill it all down to simple, straightforward and easy to use & understand information. "Designing With Javascript" does not have the depth nor cover all the topics of the other books mentioned, but I found it a VERY practical guide for most of the common problems I had to deal with. I read the others but for the most part I USED this book.
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Summary: If you are already a Pro, don't buy this book.
Review: If you are already a C, C++ and/or Java programmer, don't buy this book. Its author agrees indirectly with this thought in the book support website: "This isn't a hardcore-programming book; it isn't geared toward someone who has a computer science degree from MIT and five years experience of programming in C++. " And it shows. The book has many errors that are not included in the on-line errata. And it appears that the support website is not maintained anymore. I have not received any acknowledgement of receipt of my error reports, nor do the corrections have appeared on the site. This is a "cookbook recipe" type of book where the "why's" are not explained. If it were not for the errors (VERY rare for a book published by O'Reilly, more on that later) the book would be an OK guide for BASIC programmers who were fascinated when they found out how easy it was to produce bold, italic, underlined text in fonts with different sizes in a web page with a photo of their favorite pet, who now want to "graduate" to producing some moving objects on their page without knowing much of what's going on. Going back to O'Reilly, it appears that they have two types of books: The ones with the white covers with animals on them, and this book's type. The former seem to be the formal type that you could use as a University textbook, and this book for teenagers who want to impress their friends :-) The author IS knowledgeable about JavaScript, no doubt about that. It's the BOOK that's only so-so... IF you are a professional programmer who wants to learn JavaScript the "computer-science way", you only need David Flanagan's third edition of "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" also published by O'Reilly.
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Summary: Inaccurate and ironically: over-complicates concepts
Review: I purchased this book based on my admiration for the author's tutorials at his website, which can be extremely helpful for both professional and novices. Also, I've long been a fan of O' Reilly's books in general. Unfortunately, the book itself fell way short of my expectations. Not only is it filled with inaccuracies and full-tilt errors (many of which, the last time I checked, had been missed by the online errata pages), but the author tends to use over-complicated techniques where much more simple ones are not only more appropriate, but are common knowledge thoughout the industry. While this book seems to appeal to novice JavaScript-ers, it truly does them a dis-service by providing them with such a "broken" knowledge of the language. This is also compounded by the author's "For Dummies" attitude of mostly providing bare-bones information, in effect saying "just copy what I'm telling you here...don't worry so much about WHY you need to do this and WHY it works" (or in many cases in this book: WHY it fails because of the errors!). It's one thing to want to provide the novice with the essentials of a language to get him/her up and going quickly, but it's another to do so at the sake of code accuracy and efficiency (both of which ultimately makes things EASIER for the novice...!). As far as the so-called "easy, real-world" nature of this book others here have mentioned, I can say this as a professional in the industry: many times I've had to come in and correct errors to JavaScript code that came directly from this book. Just as many times I've had the people who's code I had to fix point to the Heinle book and say "Gee...but it seemed so simple in this book, but when I tried to use it myself it blew up." THESE sort of "real-world" examples, the results of relying too much on this kind of book, should make it clear how it can be more of a detriment than an asset to someone just trying to figure out JavaScript. It really bothers me to have this opinion of this book because, as I mentioned earlier, I really LIKE the tutorials available on the author's own website! He certainly seems to have a solid grasp of the language. But once it went to printed form, well...here's yet another reason to support "paperless" media, I guess. So if you're looking for a good solid JavaScript tutorial, forget the book and go straight to the author's website instead (which, by the way, is chock-full of pitches for the book...ignore 'em). You'll be better off...and it's cheaper. Also: look into "JavaScript, The Definitive Guide" (also from O' Reilly books), and "JavaScript Unleashed" (from Sams Net). While both tend to be the "dry" kind of book others here have mentioned, you'll find you'll get way more out of them in the long-run, especially if you take, or even plan to take, JavaScript seriously and on a professional level.
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