Great for newbs, Decent for Experienced Programmers. (especially at the price)
I wanted to learn JavaScript, up and rearing to go. So I got David Flanagan's book "The Definative Guide". But the concepts flew over my head. Its the best book on JavaScript, without a shadow of a doubt, but simply fearful to the poor old newbie like myself. Don't get me wrong, its well written, but if he had written it the way I needed it to be, it would have taken up 100000 pages. Shipping would be a nightmare!
Anyway, about this book.
It's a good book, great for newbies. I don't know why the other author review mentions that you need to have prior experiance with a programming language. That's rubbish IMO. Sure he mentions Javascript having a simularlity to C/C++/Java, but its not like you gotta learn those languages, its just a mention, thats all.
He explains basics, like what a token is, how if/else/for statements work. You know, basic stuff for a newbie to learn. If you are a programmer already, just skip the first five chapters, and you'll be in the meat of the book about JavaScript, so its just as relevant for experienced programmers too.
Anyhow, once you are finished (and applied the concepts with a mock up webpages) you are no longer a newb. Then move on to that gem which is David Flanagan's Definative Guide. After going through that and applying it, you'll be well on your way to becoming a "good" JavaScript Programmer.
P.S: Becoming actually Good is no mean feat. Take JavaScript seriously folks!
P.P.S: You MUST learn HTML and CSS before reading these books. JavaScript is almost entirely based in the real world on manipulating markup and style sheets. To attempt to learn JavaScript without knowing them properly (I do mean properly) would be a major folly.
Excellent book
Easy to follow, very concise examples, wide variety of topics
Looks good and very up-to-date
This review is based only on a quick glimpse of the book, so read this with some reservation. I might follow up with a more thorough review later.This book looks very comprehensive, and seem to be very much up-to-date with latest browsers and W3C standards, including DOM 1 and DOM 2.
But more than a 1000 pages probably makes it very difficult to read in bed ! ;-)
Giving 5 stars might seem a bit optimistic without further investigation, but I'm pretty sure it is a at least a 4-star book.
Excellent primer and reference
Firstly, this book does a great job of introducing the javascript core language in a thorough and engaging way. The author goes to great lengths on topics that will concern real-world developers and discusses in depth the right and wrong way to write code.This leads on to a more general reference on the language. It is here that the book really shines. As well as lots of examples, the fundamental principles behind the langauge and any associated technologies are mentioned. All this is done in a very avuncular style and I must admit I enjoyed reading the book, and trying out some of the examples/topics on my PC.
There are some caveats:
This is not a book for pure novices. Previous exposure to other languages is inferred and the author(s) point out similarities with Java and C++.
Netscape is the preferred browser here, but unlike some other tomes, at least IE gets a mention and differences are noted, though the writing does favour the NS browser.
These are small gripes with what is otherwise a much needed and well scripted (sic) resource.
