Need a JavaScript book...this is itIf your a web developer like myself that has worked with various languages and as such has had to work with JavaScript but not actually really grasped the language fully this is for you.
The problem with JavaScript from the beginning is that its different implementation into browsers and lack of standards has meant general understanding and coding practices have been extremely poor and as a result begginers and the like searching the internet for examples usually find something that is not alot of use to anyone.
I have also found there has been no definitive book out there until purchasing this book. As the title says, this is not for beginners, however it does cover basics and In my opinion if you have the basics or good programming skills in other similar languages, I think you can use this book.
This book covers everything you need to develop your JavaScript from the importance of cross-browser compatibility to mastering the DOM to manipulate the browser. Another great point about this book is the indepth reasons of how things work and what to do or not to do. I can highly recommend this as the best JavaScript book out there.
There is a newer version out there but I was sceptical of buying it incase it left out some stuff from the original like history and how things worked in the older browsers. I didnt want to get bogged down by the advances with new practices and browsers as you have to understand where its all come from and how developers were doing things back in day to how its done now. Dont get me wrong though, this provides all modern practices for JavaScript and its only a few years old.
Get it now.
Exceptional reference bookI was looking for a book explaining the paradigms of JavaScript and I certainly found them. The clarity of the book is exceptional; knowing other programming languages like C, C++, Java and Pascal makes the reading even more enjoyable. At last someone who thinks the readers will be able to comprehend a language's fundamentals and who does not restrict his reader to yet-another cookbook.
What I was not looking for was up to date comprehensive information of what browsers support what and the clearest explanation I came up with about the different versions of Javascript components (ie EcmaScript, DOM & BOM). Thas was a real good surprise and have saved me weeks of effort to try to rebuild these facts on my own.
A true reference book. Will look forward to buy the next edition.
Finally JavaScript as a programming languageLearning JavaScript never attracted me but since it's back to it's golden days with the demand on more responsive client side specially for me in (Investment Banking Environment), I had to learn it and the fact I that come from OOP (.NET and Java) background; finally I found the book that teaches JavaScript (Programming!!) it's worth the money; but there is one special note; this book assumes some cretin knowledge of programming so it is as it's cover states "Professional".
Very well written and structured but if you are a programmer like myself you will have a huge courage to skip the first 6-7 chapters as it explain the ABC of OOP principles; however "Warning !": do NOT skip them as things in JavaScript differs from full OOP; remember JavaScript is a prototype based scripting language.
Advice: Firefox or IE 7+ for the exercises.
Go a head grab it and break the ice of learning
Nice to dip intoIf you have been doing javascript for a while and came across all these ajax libraries using odd techniques like "prototype". For the developer who swept OO javascript under the carpet a while ago (me), this book helps you pull the rug off and dust down all those ideas about "OO in a script langauge?" and get to grips with it fast as when you start doing more and more ajax or silverlight those techniques are key to creating javascript components instead of relying on "functional" style programming.
Its no beginners book and its no reference manual, I won't say I've read it cover to cover (I skipped sections explaining OO, I know what it is I just chose to limit it to c#).
Well worth a look.
Dated and not for real programmers. Handle examples with extreme caution.I have enormous problems with this dated, confused and 'gappy' book, and advise would be readers to exercise _extreme_ caution with it, particularly with the examples, a great number of which are a long, long way from currently accepted best practice.
I don't believe that "Programmer to Programmer" describes this book well. The author's confusing and patchy descriptions of language fundamentals are not useful to those readers who are highly experienced in other programming languages such as C or C++. Neither does it seem that the author has clearly identified the target reader, as I imagine that the book will bewilder some beginners too. For example, for reasons unknown the author seemed to feel the need to embark on a "fundamentals of OOP" tutorial, a subject quite inappropriate for a "programmer-to-programmer" text as it should be taken as read, and one which is in any case too large to be adequately covered in a few pages. I imagine this may merely succeed in confusing novice programmers, who really do need to consult a proper introduction elsewhere. And why on earth did the author feel that a quick descent into UML was appropriate at the start of the third chapter? Another short section is devoted to explaining bit pattern operations, a subject that is arguably best left to real textbooks on programming fundamentals for beginners. At the same time, in many, many cases discussions of basic topics that experienced programmers would expect to find are simply absent. Javascript is in many ways highly unusual as a programming language, and because of the familiar syntax, C, C++ or Java programmers may be initially led to believe that its behaviour will be close to their expectations, yet this is not the case. For this reason it is crucial for a reference text to take care to tick off these crucial language-conversion issues properly.
Returning to the code examples, I have many problems with their poor quality. A sizeable number do not conform to current "unobtrusive" best practise. I can understand why this might have been done for reasons of brevity, but that doesn't excuse the poor example this sets. There is no discussion of accessibility, which is unforgiveable. And some of examples feature outdated, broken or deprecated techniques. The discussion of hacks to bolster up browser support for addEventListener, for example. Browser-sniffing, a deprecated technique features far too much, indeed a worrying number of examples rely on it. The author of this review is nowhere near competent to comment in detail on the quality of every code example, but the poor techniques clearly visible in some have the effect of casting doubt on the whole.
Despite being published in 2005, the book is simply too old to cover the recent tidal wave of high quality libraries which are now available, and which properly deal with some of the most difficult issues in basic javascript development, issues which this book simply does not acknowledge. The book deserves criticism for being yet one more contributor to the vast amount of poor quality javascript code on the web, yet of course it has to be said that any paper book will inevitable be vulnerable to the problem of obsolescence, since javascript support in browsers is so poor currently and techniques are changing rapidly right now.
This review is unapologetically harsh, yet I am not going to say "do not buy this book" outright. Although dated and harmful for beginners, there is a lot of material in this book, and for very experienced programmers in other programming languages who are forewarned about the book's unreliability it will at least give some idea of the issues and will provide a starting point for gathering a list of topics to be researched. But many readers may be simply better off consulting the blogs of the various acknowledged javascript gurus instead. Reading Brendan Eich's own articles would be a start.
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