JavaScript Design

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Excellent book for now-a-days,it covers all kind of language with JavaScript.The book starts with basics of Javascript that is jump start,dealing with data, variables, operators, expressions, functions.And chapter by chapter it deeps into more and more detail, like Javascript OOP and DOM, Frames, Event Handlers, Forms, DHTML, Cookie. And finally it deals with other languages like PHP,ASP,CGI,Perl,XML,Flash and Applet.
Book is nicely organized, easy to read and understand, colorfull code and body, and has lots of examples.
I will sure recommend this book for web master, developer, designer.

Rating:
Summary: Too disjointed to be a solid grounding.
Review: I liked the idea behind what Bill was trying to do - a different spin on JavaScript learning, and for the most part I thought the example code was instructionally relevant.

He makes many surprising assumptions about what you already know, and the volume of facts that you are capable of absorbing non-sequentially. There are a lot of informational gaps to fill in yourself, so be prepared to put two and two together. I found myself having to read and re-read many paragraphs multiple times to figure out what he was saying. The overall flow didn't seem smooth, making for a tough read at times.

There are 406 pages of book, only the first 272 of which can be considered remotely JavaScript-focused. The rest of the chapters digress into half-measure discussions of PHP/MySQL, ASP/VBScript, CGI/PERL, XML, Flash/ActionScript, Java, ColdFusion, and ASP.NET. This might be good as a light introduction for anyone marginally interested in any of these, but he so intermittantly crams a variety of non-expert discussion into so few pages that this only provided me with a few extra chunks of information.

Rating:
Summary: Worth every penny!
Review: I think that this book is great. I'm not a programmer -- I'm a designer -- and this book has been at my side since I bought it. This guy knows his stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Better than most
Review: I thought that this was a great book and I like Sander's approach to the topic. The last few chapters I enjoyed the most as you learn how to integrate JavaScript with back end code and also Flash, showing how JavaScript integrates with larger projects.

The downside is that I will probably have to read it again to really undestand parts of the book. The pace is kind of odd, one minute it is dragging and the next your head is spinning.

Overall I think this is one of the better books covering JavaScript. I would like to see another one that goes into more depth on ways of integrating backend and front end code.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: In my experience, it is one of the best books for JavaScript. Clearly written with exceptional handling of concepts and examples. Obviously written by a person with a great deal of experience in today's technologies as well as communicating technical subjects.

Rating:
Summary: JavaScript Bridge
Review: This book worked for me, and I think I know why. First of all, anyone who writes book on JavaScript takes a huge risk. Either the author tries to say everything and gets tangled up, or it's a gimmick book. This book is neither. The author tries to stick to the EMCA standards, which I believe is laudable. If the browsers did the same thing, we'd all be better off. So no matter who writes such a book, something is going to be left out, and this book leaves out the browser-idiosyncratic nonsense and sticks to the standards.

Second, the book bridges HTML with the back end. As a designer, I get clients who want something done with the forms in HTML. JavaScript can handle a lot of the variable manipulation through forms, but let's face it, until it links up to a database, you've got bupkis. This book bridges that gap with several middleware examples, and introduced me (thankfully) to PHP. The book has enough for me to get something that actually works with a database and middleware. I went out and bought a book on PHP and MySQL (as the author recommends), but this book gave me a working start on middleware and using databases, and I know of no other JavaScript book that does this. Also, I plunked down the princely sum of about [...] for a hosting service with PHP and MySQL. All of the software for PHP/MySQL/Apache Server is free, but use a hosting service to learn how to use it.

As far as the readability, it's clear as a bell, but it does go from the simple to the complex as the material gets more complex. I downloaded the sample chapter from www.newriders.com before I bought the book. It tackles JavaScript 1.5 so it's up to date, and I liked the example glossary. It's the kind of book (for me at least) that you read what you need and then look up stuff in. I feel I got a complete JavaScript book with the added bonus of the middleware/back-end.

Rating:
Summary: Overpriced, too thin and lacking in depth
Review: This is an excellent book for introductory JavaScript...right up to the point where some depth is required (event handling and the DOM). WHile there are many script provided, which virtually all work, they become convoluted and suffer from a lack of clarification and purpose. Often times, the author places something into a script- to show a different way of doing it, which is great- however an explanation is required. As is a much greater explanation of the DOM.

I was disappointed with this book because of the price and the content. No CD means lots of typing!

Altogether a shallow book with admirable traits but not enough execution where it counts: at the business end of things. As for the word 'design' in the title, there is little of that, in the true sence of the word. Next edition??

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book that covers all sides of Javascript
Review: What's really nice about this book is how everything builds upon previous chapters. The book walks you through each aspect of Javascript with a combination of code and dialogue that keeps you both engaged and actively learning. I have in fact just completed a course that built upon the foundations of HTML and Javascript and I felt after reading this book certain concepts I did not understand from the class, now make much more sense. Sanders does in this book what he does best and that is educate. Some may feel that this is similar to course notes but to be real honest, this book is about one thing, and that is gaining a true understanding of programming language Javascript. A real treat comes in the third part of the book that incorporates Javascript with other backend programming languages such as ASP and PHP. Many times as a web designer you are caught in situations that requires a form being verified, data being sent to a database, etc etc, and this book demonstrates the ease of incorporating Javascript with backend languages. If you want to really learn Javascript for practical use then this is the book to get!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book that covers all sides of Javascript
Review: What's really nice about this book is how everything builds upon previous chapters. The book walks you through each aspect of Javascript with a combination of code and dialogue that keeps you both engaged and actively learning. I have in fact just completed a course that built upon the foundations of HTML and Javascript and I felt after reading this book certain concepts I did not understand from the class, now make much more sense. Sanders does in this book what he does best and that is educate. Some may feel that this is similar to course notes but to be real honest, this book is about one thing, and that is gaining a true understanding of programming language Javascript. A real treat comes in the third part of the book that incorporates Javascript with other backend programming languages such as ASP and PHP. Many times as a web designer you are caught in situations that requires a form being verified, data being sent to a database, etc etc, and this book demonstrates the ease of incorporating Javascript with backend languages. If you want to really learn Javascript for practical use then this is the book to get!

Rating:
Summary: Nice Shot.....Wrong Target
Review: With short scripts cunningly contrived for the best pedagogical mileage, this is an excellent book for the serious Web scripting beginner.

Yet this book, "written with the designer in mind," will surely leave most Web site workers unsatisfied. You are sufficiently warned early on when the author acknowledges that he prefers to use a simple text editor rather than the productivity tools (Homesite, BBEdit, Dreamweaver) experienced Web designers must use to construct sites with the speed, quantity, and accuracy necessary in their jobs.

The scripts resemble transcriptions from a professor's lecture notes. These are not lively, practical examples that you can modify immediately to enrich site usability by presenting the maximum amount of information and interactivity with minimum navigation.

That weakness is highlighted in Ch. 18 when the author dramatically warms to the subject of Flash ActionScript. The pulse of real world situations beats strongly in this chapter and I wish the other chapters had the same immediacy.

The last one-third of the book is dominated by server-side scripting. If you don't have your own server or do not know how to set one up, you won't be able to follow along. I believe this is a serious failing in a book clearly directed at the "front-end" worker.

And if you are as old as I am, you will find the editor's decision to use a tiny, red font for the most important lines of code to be a bit painful.