Rating: 
Summary: Decent intro to object orientation in Javascript
Review: A book on Javascript objects would seem a challenge, especially when it presumes no prior Javascript knowledge. To do that while also providing meaningful info to interest those experienced in objects, but perhaps new to JS, would be a feat indeed. I feel the authors met both challenges. Where most Javascript books focus more on the use of JS to manipulate web documents, this book gives serious consideration to Javascript as a programming language--and it's strengths as an object-oriented one--first, and as a tool for extending HTML and web pages second. It's an interesting approach, and one that for the most part works. It's a dense book. While 60 pages of a Javascript Dummies book would go by in about an hour, expect to spend a few hours or more reaching the same point here. How much one learns will certainly depend on your background, but I can speak as someone with both mild JS and object knowledge that I learned an awful lot.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Remarkable Discovery
Review: I had hoped to learn how to jazz up my Domino Web-pages from a JavaScript book. When I got it home, I found something completely different inside. This is a book about how to implement serious data handling with a serious object oriented programming language. The authors cover all the basic JavaScript language and browser connections in the first 75 pages. They leave out a lot of glitzy tricks that you really need, but you can get those off any web-based tutorial after you really understand the language. Once they leave the basics, they cover genuine oo programming in a serious and educational way. They explain what they are doing, and they explain *WHY* brilliantly. It is an excellently written book and a lot of fun to read. If you are hoping to create a snazzy web-site without much work, you will find this book frustrating. If you want to understand JavaScript to the bone, and learn how to extend it as far as the eye can see, you WILL be able to outdo all the snazzy web-sites when you are done. The book is incredible.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of my Money
Review: I have worked with javascript for some time and wanted to learn to create javascript objects and impliment them into my code. I thought that this would be the perfect book for my needs but I have never been so wrong. The book could be called "creating data structures using javascript" because it jumps right into complex examples of creating data structures with very little explanation of what is happing from a language prospective. I did get far enouph to write some BAD object code and post it out to a news group who got me on the right track. THIS IS NOT THE BOOK FOR YOU IF YOU ARE TRYING TO LEARN JAVASCRIPT OBJECTS FOR THE FIRST TIME. It is now in my trash basket.
Rating: 
Summary: Not JavaScript Objects
Review: Not up to par with the normal writings of Wrox Press. This book talks a lot and gives ideas but fails to properly explain the code or the objects. Chapter 6 is an introduction and discussion on a database application but fails to be anything other than an expanded users guide for the app. More time could have been spent explaining how the object structure in the applications is being used. In my opinion the title miss leads you into something that the book really is not. It should be called "Ideas for what to do with JavaScript".
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The main point that the authors attempt to make is that JavaScript can be a powerful and flexible object-oriented programming language. This book is better suited for the classroom than for real-world web development. Out of its 450+ pages, a single 30-page chapter deals with JavaScript in the browser. Since I have several years of C/C++ experience, I bought this book primarily for the object reference table in the appendix. As I began writing real JavaScript applications, however, it became clear that this book was more of a hinderance than a help -- that even the object reference was a watered down version of the Netscape documentation. For instance, the book makes no distinction between read/write and read-only properties. The programmer is left guessing whether his program is failing or the property is not writable. I found that "JavaScript - The Definitive Guide" by O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 1-56592-392-8) covers browser objects much more thoroughy.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The main point that the authors attempt to make is that JavaScript can be a powerful and flexible object-oriented programming language. This book is better suited for the classroom than for real-world web development. Out of its 450+ pages, a single 30-page chapter deals with JavaScript in the browser. Since I have several years of C/C++ experience, I bought this book primarily for the object reference table in the appendix. As I began writing real JavaScript applications, however, it became clear that this book was more of a hinderance than a help -- that even the object reference was a watered down version of the Netscape documentation. For instance, the book makes no distinction between read/write and read-only properties. The programmer is left guessing whether his program is failing or the property is not writable. I found that "JavaScript - The Definitive Guide" by O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 1-56592-392-8) covers browser objects much more thoroughy.
Rating:
Summary: A great book with great depth
Review: This is an important book, that takes the object-oriented aspects of Javascript seriously and will take you there, if you are prepared to think long and hard. I found the reading is slow going because there is an incrediable amount of material here. Buy this book and then find lots of time to work the code and think about OO and how javascript does OO. Wow
Rating:
Summary: JavaScript Objects
Review: Very good book. If your just looking for a JavaScript reference or a source for scripts, this is not the book. The authors take a serious approach to client-side applications using JavaScript and object-oriented code. Others have complained about the examples being too academic but I found them very appropriate for the kinds of things I'd do such as using regular expressions for form validation, binding of html elements to objects, etc., using tree and stack data structures for document parsing... Even if you already use these techniques I found it an effective way to teach the language.
Rating:
Summary: JavaScript Objects
Review: Very good book. If your just looking for a JavaScript reference or a source for scripts, this is not the book. The authors take a serious approach to client-side applications using JavaScript and object-oriented code. Others have complained about the examples being too academic but I found them very appropriate for the kinds of things I'd do such as using regular expressions for form validation, binding of html elements to objects, etc., using tree and stack data structures for document parsing... Even if you already use these techniques I found it an effective way to teach the language.
Rating:
Summary: Thinking clearly in a scripting language
Review: Your code can benefit from object-oriented programming even if your language doesn't support it directly. Javascript provides more support for O-O programming than (say) C, although much less than Java. JSO shows you how to write client-side applications in object-oriented Javascript. It leads you through useful examples using the technique, demonstrating that you can do many sophisticated and useful things with this 'scripting' language. For very experienced programmers, this will at times be a slow, but most developers will benefit from the close attention to the code. JSO doubles as a concise introduction and reference to Javascript, covering it better in 80 pages than those bricks in the bookstore do in 1200. The strength of this book is also its weakness. Since it focusses on client-side functionality, its example of client/server Web programming is unrealistically tilted towards providing all functionality on the client. But, given the current state of the art, I can't think of a better way of doing this without spending too much time on server-side issues. Along the same lines, the current incompatibilities among implementations force it to be browser-specific (Internet Explorer). Overall, this is probably the best book on client-side Javascript programming -- as long as you don't care about cross-browser compatibility.
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