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| Author | David Flanagan |
| Title | Javascript: A Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition (1998) |
| Publisher | O'Reilly |
| Pages | 776 |
| Rating |
(1=safely ignore; 5=must have!) |
| Reviewer | Jason Friedman |
| ISBN | 1-56592-392-8 |
| Summary | It's hard to go wrong with O'Reilly. |
| Review | The author teaches Javascript from the ground up, assuming the reader has some, but not much programming experience. Like most O'Reilly texts, it is well-written, has a detailed index and table of contents, and uses good fonts.
The author's coverage of object-oriented programming (Javascript is object-oriented) is acceptable, there are likely better texts out there, though. Those of us who start the book with little object-oriented experience have to read it slowly, or twice, or both. The book describes the key browser events, how to detect them with Javascript, and what to do with them. The examples are mostly short, I would have appreciated some more in-depth examples. The book does describe the differences between IE's and Navigator's implementation of Javascript and the Document Object Model. If you are just looking for a tutorial on spicing up your web pages with Javascript, this book would be satisfactory, but not great. |