The Art & Science of JavaScript [Paperback]

Cameron Adams (Author), James Edwards (Author), Christian Heilmann (Author), Michael Mahemoff (Author), Ara Pehlivanian (Author), Dan Webb (Author), Simon Willison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2007

We've assembled seven of the greatest minds in modern JavaScript to teach you the most inspirational techniques you'll ever use. From creating impressive mashups and stunning, dynamic graphics, to more subtle user-experience enhancements, you're about to be amazed by the true potential of this powerful language.

With an all star line-up of authors including James Edwards, Michael Mahemoff, Ara Pehlivanian, Cameron Adams, Dan Webb, Christian Heilmann, and Simon Willison, this superb book will show you how to:

Create a slick Google Maps and Flickr mashup. Build your own fully accessible 3D maze. Create stunning vector graphics using the canvas element. Have some fun with draggable and sortable table columns. Give your site some extra personality with client-side badges. Write better code faster using metaprogramming techniques. Become a debugging expert using pro-level Firebug tricks.

Presented in full color, all of the books solutions are cross-browser and cross-platform compatible. Best of all, all the code used in the book is available for you to download and experiment with.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is targeted at intermediate JavaScript developers who want to take their JavaScript skills to the next level without sacrificing web accessibility or best practice.

If you have even a small amount of experience with JavaScript, and are comfortable enough programming in another language such as PHP or Java, you'll be just fine - we'll hold your hand along the way, and all of the code is available for you to download and experiment with on your own.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cameron has a degree in law and one in science; naturally he chose a career in Web development. When pressed, he labels himself a \"Web Technologist\" because he likes to have a hand in graphic design, JavaScript, CSS, Perl (yes, Perl), and anything else that takes his fancy that morning. While running his own business (www.themaninblue.com) he\'s consulted and worked for government departments, nonprofit organisations, large corporations and tiny startups.
As well as helping his list of clients, Cameron has taught numerous workshops around the country and spoken at conferences worldwide, such as @Media and Web Essentials. He has also written a book &emdash; The JavaScript Anthology &emdash; which is one of the most complete question and answer resources on modern JavaScript techniques.

JAMES EDWARDS is a Nortel Networks Certified Support Specialist (NNCSS) in VPN Routers. His experience includes work with some of Nortel's largest enterprise customers.

RICHARD BRAMANTE, also a Nortel Networks Certified Support Specialist (NNCSS), has been in Nortel VPN Router support for three years, and was a technology lead on the Instant Internet.

AL MARTIN is a technical writer with 15 years of experience in electro-mechanical and computer-related disciplines.

Christian Heilmann grew up in Germany and, after a year working with people with disabilities for the red cross, he spent a year as a radio producer. From 1997 he worked for several agencies in Munich as a web developer. In 2000 he moved to the States to work for Etoys and, after the .com crash, he moved to the UK where he currently works as a lead developer for Agilisys. He publishes an almost daily blog at http://wait-till-i.com and runs an article repository at http://icant.co.uk. He is a member of the Web Standards Project's DOM Scripting Task Force.

Michael Mahemoff holds a Ph.D in Computer Science and Software Engineering from The University of Melbourne, where his thesis was on "Design Reuse in Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction". He lives in London and consults on software development issues in banking, healthcare, and logistics.

Dan Webb is a web application developer and renowned JavaScript expert who has spoken at @media 2006, RailsConf Europe, and The Ajax Experience; written for A List Apart and Sitepoint; and is a member of UK web design group the Brit Pack. More recently, he's written the Low Pro extension for Prototype, coauthored the Unobtrusive JavaScript plug-in, and become a member of the newly formed Prototype Core Team.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint; 1 edition (December 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980285844
• ISBN-13: 978-0980285840
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ara has been working on the Web since 1997. He's been a freelancer, the webmaster at Festival Just For Laughs, a front-end web developer and practice lead at Nurun, a Front-End Engineer on the Mail team at Yahoo! and most recently, a Front-End Engineer on the Cloud Services team at HP. Ara's experience comes from having worked on every aspect of web development throughout his career, but he's now following his passion for web standards-based front-end development. When he isn't speaking and writing about best practices or coding professionally, he's maintaining his personal site at http://arapehlivanian.com/.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Artfully scientific, February 1, 2008

By 

Tommy Olsson "accessibility evangelist" (Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art & Science of JavaScript (Paperback)

This is a very interesting book for anyone who is interested in going to the 'next level' of JavaScript. It's not a book for absolute beginners, but everything is very well explained without wasting time on trivia.

The chapter on metaprogramming (self-modifying code) is my favourite. Not only because it presents some very useful ideas, but also because it finally made me understand how JavaScript does certain things under the bonnet.

James Edward's Maze game is nothing short of a-maze-ing. It's a fine example of what you can do if you have the ability to think outside the box. (Way outside, in this case!)

The only negative part is the first chapter. Not because it's not useful -- it is! -- and not because it's badly written -- it isn't. The reason is that the code samples use XHTML markup but the JavaScript code will not work if that markup is served as real XHTML. The JavaScript relies on the HTML DOM, e.g., that nodeName properties are returned in uppercase. The use of character entity references is also ill-advised for XHTML.

Unfortunately, there isn't any informtion about this in the text. Someone who isn't well-versed in the fundamental differences between HTML and XHTML would learn some harmful practices.

The sad part is that it would have been so easy to write the JavaScript in a way that would have worked in both the HTML DOM and the XML DOM.

The remainder of the book contains good code examples which don't sacrifice accessibility.

Having said that, I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn how to use JavaScript for something other than validating form input.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Learning Experience, February 2, 2008

By 

Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art & Science of JavaScript (Paperback)

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I saw a bunch of things I *wanted* to criticize about this book but ended up being more positive as I began to see the educational value of the chapters. This book is not for absolute beginners by any means, however the material is presented in a smooth way as each script addition is explained separately.

Do NOT expect to come away from the book's chapters with code that can be immediately applied to a typical professional application or Web site. Things like a JavaScripted maze game can be great for learning some cool things but that is all.

Even the practical-sounding features like table column sorting and table column dragging could not be applied to a production situation without considerable modification. For instance, the column dragging scenario depends on all columns having similar width. If not, then the result is pretty messy. And we all know that data tables can be messy in the best of cases!

The index is miserable, but that is pretty much the rule for computer tech books.

The ensemble of authors is top-notch and some, like Christian Heilmann, (Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional) have written excellent books you may want to check out. You really can't go wrong with this book for a solid advance in your script education.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great JavaScript Book, January 25, 2008

By 

Brad A. Williams "Author: Professional WordPress" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art & Science of JavaScript (Paperback)

I just received my latest book in the SitePoint collection, The Art & Science of JavaScript.

As always SitePoint has gathered some of the greatest minds in modern JavaScript to collaborate on an amazingly easy to follow book.

The Art & Science covers some great topics including Google Maps and Flickr mashups, building your own fully accessible 3D maze, draggable and sortable table columns, and much more!

SitePoint has always amazed me with the beautiful layout and design of their books. Code is easily readable in a fixed-width font with a blue background. The book also displays Tips, Notes, and Warning icons to help expand upon certain points.

This book is geared towards anyone who is familiar with JavaScript and wants to take their skills to the next level.