Customer Reviews

Beginning JavaScript Second Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All of the reviews of this book from April 2004 and earlier are based on the 1st edition, not this new second edition which didn't publish until the end of April 2004. The second edition adds some new great coverage of dynamic HTML in more recent browser versions and a new chapter on JavaScript and XML. Throughout the book there are many new examples and all of the code is now updated to be sure it works with the latest browser versions.

I have experience programming Java, C++, Q-Basic, CSS, HTML, PHP and started to learn JavaScript from free resources on the internet. The problem is that the internet is full of sales pitches and just free code. I wanted to get a good understanding to write my own code. The Beginning JavaScript gave me a great understanding of the basics. The reading was very easy- for someone with programming experience, there was too much of the basic programming info and far too many examples to help understand the basics. If you have NO programming experience, then this book is perfect for you because it will teach you everything you need to get started. After reading this book I was able to do some pretty cool dymanic website stuff on my websites.

I did want to learn more JavaScript though, so I checked out the Professional JavaScript by the same publisher. The Professional JavaScript book is great (especially if you read the Beginning JavaScript or already now programming or a little JavaScript). I was affraid that after reading the Beginning JavaScript book I would see a lot of repeat stuff in the Professional JavaScript book- that is NOT the case. There is a little over lap, but the Professional book does not spend as much time on the easy stuff. To make a long review short... I recommend the Beginning for beginners and I recommend the Professional to those who finished the Beginning book and to those that are already good at programming!

For years I'd gotten by with learning/copying JavaScript from existing websites, and used "JavaScript for the World Wide Web visual Quickstart guide" as my meager handbook. I finally decided to get serious about it.

Paul Wilton's book is very well-written and easy to follow. Even skimming the stuff I thought I knew I'd find cool new things I'd never heard of.

As a bonus, his section on Regular Expressions, another topic I'd found difficult for years, is a real eye-opener. He goes through the RegExp thought process step by step, gradully revealing more powerful options, with useful examples. I'm finally going to USE Regular Expressions! And I'm not the only one who found this enlightening. Wilton was hired to cover Regular Expressions in a few other books as well.

In short, I doubt I'll ever need another JavaScript book, and this was money well spent.

When this book arrived I thought my gosh what am I in for here, it's got nearly 1000 pages! But then I started to work through and was pleasantly surprised at the effort the author has put into ensuring that the reader understands everything being set forth. It's particularly good that the basics of important material from previous chapters are briefly reiterated when they are being put into practical use in the next chapter.

The only reservation I have is with the exercises at the end of each chapter; it would have been good to have had small exercise sections through each chapter instead of just a broad sweep of a few exercises at the end. A lot of material is covered and I found it hard to absorb except in very small sections. Still, if this were the case, the book would probably be twice the length! It all comes down to what suits different readers. It's great that the code for the various examples can be downloaded from the publisher's site, but I find it's best to type the code in line by line and read the explanatory text with it.

I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone starting out webpage design. It will be money well spent.

I bought the first edition of this text five years ago when I was just beginning to learn JavaScript, and I still refer to it on a regular basis despite having several other more advanced texts on Javascript, because the information in this text is so complete and well-explained. I am writing this review today because the book is here on my desktop as I am working on a script, and it occurred to me that I should take a moment to acknowledge what a valuable resource it has been for me.

The first edition is dated, of course, due to browser changes mainly. The transition from Classic ASP to ASP.NET is another area where the technology has changed, but the basic information on the language itself is as relevant as ever. That notwithstanding, I'll have to purchase the 2nd edition now that I'm aware of it's existence.

This book will gently but firmly take you from knowing nothing about Javascript to programming at an advanced beginner to intermediate level, and once you have worked through the entire book, you'll find yourself using it as a reference for the details of syntax or the useful little tricks, as well as the excellent documentation of the Javascript core and the various object models.

If you are looking for information on more advanced techniques, such as object-oriented construction or extension, or very advanced DHTML, you might consider a text such as Danny Goodman's, or the Wrox Professional JavaScript 2nd Ed., or the Javascript Developers Dictionary which is available new for just a few bucks and is not bad at all.

I have spent the past 6 months purchasing/reading numerous books about a variety of programming languages (i.e. ASP, Visual Basic, C++, PHP, VBScript, Javascript, XML, SQL etc.) to become adept at a high level in web development project management to better understand why each language is chosen over another in any given scenario. I also enrolled in an online Intro to Programming class for the past 8 weeks that focused on the C++ language. I started reading this book from the beginning and immediately the basic concepts for programming that the C++ class tried to instill were so much more clear in this book's presentation that many lightbulbs have been going off moment by moment as I read further. This book lays out a great foundation for understanding programming in an organized and easy to grasp presentation of the material. Of course it's all about JavaScript but it gives the much needed foundation for those of us who know HTML but haven't gone on to the next step to fully dive into scripting languages and beyond to create dynamic websites.

For a beginning JavaScript book, this covers a lot of topics. The trade-off naturally is that some topics aren't covered as thoroughly as they might be. As an example, it only mentions one form of commenting code, with 2 slashes:

//this comment must fit on one line

without mentioning comments surrounded by /* and */, as in

/* this comment can extend over
* many lines */

On the other hand, it also covers topics beginning books might omit, like using the free Microsoft Script Debugger, and embedding RealPlayer content.

The book is a bit dated, spending quite a bit of time discussing Netscape 4.x, when most NN users have navigated to Firefox by now. It also uses a lot of deprecated HTML, so tweaking is necessary if you want to validate the examples with the W3C Validator.

A feature I liked were the problems at the end of each chapter, with a solution provided in the appendix. Also, it explains every code example *very* thoroughly--maybe even a bit too much at times when the explanations become repetitious. However, the trivia game application it develops over the course of many chapters is too simplistic to provide much of a real world example, and while there is a support website, it doesn't seem too up to date. I've submitted several errors, but have yet to see them posted.

All in all, I'd rate this 3 1/2 stars, but since I can't do that, I rounded up to 4 stars.

My company had bought one copy of several books on JavaScript and everyone started borrowing Beginning JavaScript. So we bought several more! It is complete, easy to follow - for both beginning programmers and experienced programmers new to JavaScript. We were particularly interested in generating XML files. The 'advanced' book we bought didn't cover it, but Beginning JavaScript did. We couldn't be happier with it!

Extremely huge book. Great for a blank introduction to the language. Very extremely thorough. Not so much of a quick reference book, but great for learning the basic and advanced commands of JavaScript. It is so big I've had it for a while and still have not finished reading it.. You create a JavaScript quiz throughout the book that tells you how many you got wrong and your score. Great introduction book, it does have advanced stuff at the end of it.

I learnt Javascript for the first time from this book and the experience is really great.The examples are beneficial to solve real world problems.
Highly recommended for first time Javascript users