A great introduction to DOM Scripting
I've had time lately to do a lot more reading and Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting book is another one that belongs on your shelf if you're trying to learn any amount of JavaScript. I've hated and avoided JavaScript for years, mostly because I started my career during the browser wars and quickly grew tired of having to write different code for different browsers. Thankfully, those days are now mostly over and this book has made me love JavaScript again.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a standard for conceptualizing and representing the contents of an HTML or XML type document. Mr. Keith's book teaches how to use JavaScript to manipulate the DOM so that you can dynamically add or remove content from a page, change the way things look, or move things around. Similar to how CSS allows you to control the presentation of your content, DOM scripting allows you to control behaviors and events.
There are lots of great JavaScript frameworks available like jQuery, Script.aculo.us, or Dojo which allow you to easily enhance your websites. In order to fully take advantage of them though, you need to have a fundamental understanding of how things like the DOM and JavaScript event handling work. That's where this book really excels. It's written primarily for web standards developers fluent in XHTML/CSS who're looking to branch into more client-side scripting.
This book is full of useful lessons and real world examples on how to make JavaScript and the DOM work in your applications. It also places a heavy focus on fundamentals and best practices such as graceful degradation which will help you make sure that your sites still function well even without the fancy JavaScript enhancements. JavaScript has long been thought to make things inaccessible but it doesn't have to be. This book stresses how to use these technologies in an efficient, unobtrusive way.
What I liked most about this book was the voice in which it was written. I've read dozens of boring hard-to-follow tech manuals over the years but this book felt more like a friend standing over your shoulder and walking you through the process. That does somewhat limit the amount of information the book can cover and it definitely doesn't go very far into advanced techniques. If you've been doing standards development and basic JavaScript for a while though, and you really want to get started on increasing your scripting skills, this book makes an excellent primer. For me it turned my impression of JavaScript from an overly-complex annoyance to an easy-to-use yet incredibly powerful tool for improving my websites.
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Will change your programming entirely. An excellent Excellent book
With a friendly and humorous style of writing, this book is liable to revolutionize the way your are writing your code, bringing you to an entirely new level of programming for the web. Although not very thick - the author doesn't miss a beat. No eccentricity of the various JavaScript functions is looked over, and when you are facing a problem - just go back to the section in the book that discusses whatever function is giving you a hard time - and you are most likely to find the reason why. Also recommended is "Css Mastery" by Andy Budd.
Enjoyable, easy to follow introduction to practical JS solutions without a library
I really enjoyed this book. Granted, I'm a big more experienced with JavaScript than the market that this book targets, but I was looking for a sort of re-introduction to straight JavaScripting - that is, without a library like Prototype or jQuery, and this book delivers. The examples are clear and easy to follow, and the author does numerous, very practical things - all in all, a great book and an enjoyable read.
David Berube
Berube Consulting
I've been recommending this book to everyone. No lie.
I started reading this book with little to no Javascript experience. A little less than a year later, I'm able to take the concepts from this book and really fly. This book will definitely help you learn the foundations of the DOM (Document Object Model) and how to manipulate it to do some pretty incredible stuff. Jeremy shows you the importance of separating out your CSS, Javascript and HTML and how to make it all work seamlessly. Sure, you can do all the same stuff using Prototype, jQuery, MooTools, etc. but it's important to learn the basics first before you start using those. For those of you who know nothing about Javascript, this is the book for you. You'll really have the upper hand in making some really powerful web applications.
Supurb introduction to JavaScript for Designers
DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith turned out to be just what I was looking for. It isn't AJAX. It's JavaScript, from a solid standards based model, that promotes well formed XHTML and CSS. It's good scripting build on top of good code, which is a good thing.
If the book simply promoted "best practices" it would be worthwhile. But this is a very good teaching text, too. The last feature is so rare that I bow to Mr. Keith. So often programming texts are written by and for alpha geeks and are opaque to mere mortals. I can actually understand this book the first time through.
DOM Scripting is written, not to programmers but to designers, albeit designers who are competent hand coders, but designers, none the less. The examples make sense. The projects are ones I actually will use. And terms are described in plain English, with no assumptions of some core, pre-existing knowledge. What makes this book even friendlier is that fact that it isn't a doorstop. At less than 400 pages, including appendices, it's not so intimidating that it will never get read.
If you read and work this book, you will have a solid foundation in client side, interactive web design. If you need to do AJAX, you will have a good handle on how to work its basic tools in your web pages.
If you already know JavaScript and simply want to get current on the DOM, you should find this a quick read and not a reference.
(65 reviews)
