Hits the Spot for Quick Introduction to JavaScript
Some programmers look down on the Sams Teach Yourself series as beneath their level. I imagine that some professional chefs also look down on a ham sandwhich. However, sometimes a ham sandwhich with cheese on rye really hits the spot. The Sam Teach Yourself series of books provide a practical and efficient way to get introduced to a new topic.
The "Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 21 Days" is no exception. With the emergence of AJAX as a cutting edge way to provide rich web based applications, the demand for a working knowledge of JavaScript will increase.
"Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 21 Days" goes step by step through the core aspects of JavaScript. This book teaches fundamentals such as variables, arrays, statements, functions, built-in methods, and basic objects. The book also teaches introductory DHTML and SVG manipulation--though some of it may seem out of date as the book was published three years ago.
In general, the authors do a good job of explaining programming concepts and how JavaScript implements them. I found in a couple of cases where the code examples had errors. While I was able to work around the errors in the book, it's always frustrating when the example doesn't work.
If you are a programmer who needs to implement JavaScript in your current project, "Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 21 Days" will probably help you get up to speed quickly. Or if you are new to programming and need a step by step guide to a relatively easy language to use, you will find "Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 21 Days" an easy to use and approachable book.
If you are looking for a more advanced discussion of JavaScript, this book may disappoint you. You may want to consider O'Reilly's "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide".
Egregious errors!
There are enough serious errors in this book to overshadow any positive attributes it may have. Things like on page 88 (first edition, May 2002) where the author confuses the modulus of a number with its absolute value: "The modulus of a number is the same as the number if the number is greater than zero. If the number is less than zero, then its modulus is the negation of the number - that is, the modulus of -5 is 5. The modulus is sometimes referred to as the absolute value of the number." You will discover a function called "getModulus" that returns the absolute value of a number on page 87.
You also will find on page 74 the author claiming that the bitwise NOT operator used thusly: ~9 would result in -10!
These sorts of errors are not acceptable in a professional reference or tutorial of any sort.
Well written book
I'm very pleased with this book. It covers a large amount of JavaScript. However, like any other Sams Teach Yourself in 21 days series, this book will take you longer than 21 days to finish. The only complaint I have with this book is the lack of a JavaScript reference in the back. While it has one, it's not that large. Over all, if you want to learn JavaScript, buy this book. You can easily tell by how well written the book is that the author of this book is great JavaScript programmer.
Doorstopper. Not worth it.
I thought this book was pretty good, when I first started. Because I was able to do a little something with Javascript and I've never even really tried a scripting or programming language before (I know HTML, buts thats just markup). But I put this book on the back burner after I learned what I wanted from Javascript (and really hit the wall after not being able to really use it much more after that). So I started learning Actionscript, where I saw more opportunites for its use. I got "Actionscript: The Definitive Guide" by Colin Moock, and I was actually enlightened. Everything was so much clearer. Actionscript and Javascript are very similar, and when I do write scripts with Javascript and need help, this book "Sams Teach Yourself Javascript in 21 Days" never helps me, I have to use Colin Moock's ACTIONSCRIPT BOOK and I find what I need.
The back appendix of this book, "Javascript in 21 Days", where it is supposed to list methods/functions/etc. is useless. Why even have it there? Moock's actionscript book has an appendix that you can actually use for reference (descriptions, examples, usefull)
I wish I knew all this before I bought this particular Javascript book. I suggest O'Reilly's "Javascript: The Definitive Guide", if it is half as good as Moock's "Actionscript: The Definitive Guide", you'll be all set.
Great for beginners, too slow for experienced programmers
I found this book very useful, and I was able to learn JavaScript from it, although I didn't follow the book's tutorials sequentially.The most important thing to note is that this book is not really suitable for an experienced programmer who wants to add JavaScript to the list of programming languages that he/she knows. If you already know several other programming languages then you'll find the pace of this book much too slow. There are too many simple examples and too much discussion of basic programming principles.
For a beginning programmer these many examples and down-to-earth discussions are great. The authors assume that the reader has no knowledge of programming at all, which is fine if the reader is new to programming.
A couple of the especially useful things I found in this book were an example showing a clever way of using the onClick event for an "a" tag, and information about where to find the Microsoft script debugger.
On the other hand, I did find a few minor errors. And on page 20 a CD-ROM is mentioned, but in fact no CD-ROM accompanies the book. Instead, as explained on page 5, the sample files from the book are available on the Internet.
So if you're new to programming then this is a good book for you, but if you're an experienced programmer then you should find something else.
Rennie Petersen
(10 reviews)
