Very big book
Extremely huge book. Great for a blank introduction to the language. Very extremely thorough. Not so much of a quick reference book, but great for learning the basic and advanced commands of JavaScript. It is so big I've had it for a while and still have not finished reading it.. You create a JavaScript quiz throughout the book that tells you how many you got wrong and your score. Great introduction book, it does have advanced stuff at the end of it.
Its a great book for beginners and helps you grow in the field as it moves on
Its a great book one I think should always be there even when you have moved on to advanced levels of Java scripting. The language is simple great examples help you put your knowledge at work.
Beginning JavaScript- a great place to start
I have experience programming Java, C++, Q-Basic, CSS, HTML, PHP and started to learn JavaScript from free resources on the internet. The problem is that the internet is full of sales pitches and just free code. I wanted to get a good understanding to write my own code. The Beginning JavaScript gave me a great understanding of the basics. The reading was very easy- for someone with programming experience, there was too much of the basic programming info and far too many examples to help understand the basics. If you have NO programming experience, then this book is perfect for you because it will teach you everything you need to get started. After reading this book I was able to do some pretty cool dymanic website stuff on my websites.
I did want to learn more JavaScript though, so I checked out the Professional JavaScript by the same publisher. The Professional JavaScript book is great (especially if you read the Beginning JavaScript or already now programming or a little JavaScript). I was affraid that after reading the Beginning JavaScript book I would see a lot of repeat stuff in the Professional JavaScript book- that is NOT the case. There is a little over lap, but the Professional book does not spend as much time on the easy stuff. To make a long review short... I recommend the Beginning for beginners and I recommend the Professional to those who finished the Beginning book and to those that are already good at programming!
good overview
For a beginning JavaScript book, this covers a lot of topics. The trade-off naturally is that some topics aren't covered as thoroughly as they might be. As an example, it only mentions one form of commenting code, with 2 slashes:
//this comment must fit on one line
without mentioning comments surrounded by /* and */, as in
/* this comment can extend over
* many lines */
On the other hand, it also covers topics beginning books might omit, like using the free Microsoft Script Debugger, and embedding RealPlayer content.
The book is a bit dated, spending quite a bit of time discussing Netscape 4.x, when most NN users have navigated to Firefox by now. It also uses a lot of deprecated HTML, so tweaking is necessary if you want to validate the examples with the W3C Validator.
A feature I liked were the problems at the end of each chapter, with a solution provided in the appendix. Also, it explains every code example *very* thoroughly--maybe even a bit too much at times when the explanations become repetitious. However, the trivia game application it develops over the course of many chapters is too simplistic to provide much of a real world example, and while there is a support website, it doesn't seem too up to date. I've submitted several errors, but have yet to see them posted.
All in all, I'd rate this 3 1/2 stars, but since I can't do that, I rounded up to 4 stars.
Excellent Book
I learnt Javascript for the first time from this book and the experience is really great.The examples are beneficial to solve real world problems.
Highly recommended for first time Javascript users
(12 reviews)
