Customer Reviews

Designing with JavaScript, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

Most JavaScript books force you to slog through reams of reference material before you get to the good stuff. This book is not one of them. Nick Heinle, former WebReference expert and WebCoder wunderkind, and Bill Pena have updated Heinle's first edition into O'Reilly's patented Web Studio style intro to JavaScript.

Aimed at beginning to intermediate scripters, DWJ2 skips the dry stuff and dives right into practical real-world examples of useful scripts you can easily add to your own pages. Everything from simple descriptive links and remotes, to frames, form validation and arrays, through sniffing, rollovers, personalization through cookies, and more advanced topics are covered.

A brief DHTML chapter follows, with some simplified examples of drop-down menus (non-hierarchical), sliding tabs, and scrolling layers with clipping, useful for news feeds.

The advanced chapter covers object-oriented scripting and shows how to create a quiz to test your readers. Relational select menus (2-level) illustrate using two-dimensional arrays nicely.

I especially enjoyed the section on cross-browser style objects, where the authors demonstrate the use of Netscape's xbStyle object. xbStyle is a simple abstraction layer that removes the complexity of accessing style properties. Using xbStyle you can grab, hide, and move layers without worrying about implementation details of specific browsers.

The coolest thing about xbStyle is the layer grabbing technique. xbStyle implements a W3C-like document.getElementById() method for 4.0 browsers! For these older browsers, xbStyle redefines this method, to make its use seamless for scripters manipulating layers (DIVs). This example demonstrates the leveraging power of a well-executed API. This book is a good intro by example to JavaScript.

I am more of a designer than a programmer. This book caught my attention by it's title "Designing with Javascript". I wanted to design more engaging web pages. However HTML just wasn't enough. So I decided to learn Javascript. This is my first time diving into Javascript.

In the PREFACE it even says that "the examples are designed to be applied immediately in web pages, so explanations focus on the key features and discuss how the scripts can be modified to suit individual needs". It's true. From the beginning of this book you are diving right into the material, and can even apply some of the codes to your existing web pages. The material presented is VERY EASY to follow. It talks about the language from the very basic foundation. It gradually introduces you from the basic foundation to the more advanced functions.

This book is also from the O'Reilly Web Studio. From whom I also own other books for Web and Multimedia design and programming.

I'm a true beginner. I've been learning javascript, and this is definitely not the book for that. It claims to teach, but it doesn't, not really. I have to admit it does explain the techniques and examples used, but the style in which this book is written I did not find very conducive to learning the language. This is more like a compilation of the most commonly used scripts. The examples are made to be applied immediately in webpages. I did dip into it and use one or two scripts, but for the most part I did not get that much out of it(other than the pleasure of viewing the pretty pink swirly pattern on the cover and throughout the book).

I would compare this book's offerings to fast food: it all comes prepared, and the most you'll have to do is squeeze some ketchup on top of it. You won't be stepping into the kitchen.

I found JavaScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner, by Andy Harris, much better for learning javascript concepts and syntax.

In some of my other reviews, I've talked about how you need a mixture of "how to" and reference books. This book falls into the "how to" realm, as this is a volume you can use if you're just starting out with JavaScript. Don't let the small size fool you, however. There's a lot of really good information packed into a book of manageable size.

The book is made up of a series of code samples that illustrate a particular task or function you'd want to accomplish in a web page. For instance, in the Forms And Validation chapter, the authors discuss why you would want to use JavaScript to do form validation. They then start out with a simple script to show how you'd set up a validation script for a form. After that, they start to build out the different validation edits that should catch invalid data. At the end, they recap with the complete script they just walked you through. The advantage to this style is that you are learning by doing real-world examples. And when finished, you have examples of code that you can refer back to in the future when you need similar functionality.

Another important thing to understand about JavaScript is how to use it to work with the object model of the browser, such as windows, forms, images, etc. Much of this information is interspersed within the chapters that are teaching you how to do things with JavaScript. I would have liked to see a chapter devoted just to the browser object model. However, given the intended audience (beginning web developers), it could have been a little too confusing to break that out.

For Notes/Domino developers, you'll find a lot that will be immediately useful as you start developing Domino web applications. Once again, the form validation section will help you to understand how you can use JavaScript to do your form validation instead of making round trips to the server to edit the Domino form using @Formula language. You will have to work a little harder to translate some of this into the Domino development environment, however. Since Domino translates Notes design objects into HTML "on the fly", you may never end up coding <FORM> tags by hand. You'll have to work to understand where you can put JavaScript code within Designer so that it works in your application. Having said that, you will still need to know how to code the JavaScript routines that you'll need. This book will help you get there.

Conclusion
I would recommend this book if you are just starting to get into using JavaScript for your Domino web apps. You'll get up to speed quickly on basic functionality, and you can refer back to the examples over time to help you figure out new features you want to add over time.

I recommend this book to people that have done some HTML(& CSS), Javascript. This books presents the techniques that are used to create sliding menu bars, scrollers, tabbed folders, and many practical & useful scripts. The book doesnt delve deep into the syntax of javascript, but teaches you the technique instead. Together with the well chosen examples(& example code) and screenshots, it is easy to understand.

Although the example codes are simple, once you get the basics, you can easily create your own scripts using the techniques taught in the books and interwine them with your own imagination.

The xbStyle object presented at the end of the book really helped. Although its a little outdated (xbStyle.js has been split into 2- xbStyle.js and xbDOM.js). But the API's are still the same, except now they are more specific(being split into xbDOM[contains methods like xbGetElementById() ] and xbStyle[object] and all.

Overall, this terrific book will put you on the 'exponential' road to javascript success. It did to me

If you are looking for a book to cover DHTML, DOM, and java scripting with a view to enhance your web sites, this is an excellent book.

I have developed many corporate ASP.NET web sites, and did not rely on java scripting for anything. (Yes ASP.NET pages do generate some java scripts).

I found this book a great stepping off point to learn CSS, DHTML, DOM, and using java scripts to enhance my web sites.

I tried to do the autoscroll example from chapter three. I started with the samples I downloaded and unzipped from the O'Reilly site. The first thing I noticed was that the picture in the samples was different from the picture in the book (no bother there), but then I noticed the picture was not really big enough to fill up the full width of the page, much less be big enough to scroll.

I went to a site which had panoramas so I could find a picture big enough for the exercise, and finished writing the page. But when I tried it out, the script didn't work at all. Not being an expert, I assumed that I had done the exercise incorrectly, but when I tried the example downloaded from the O'Reilly website-- it didn't work either!!!

Also, I noticed the code example in the book did not match the sample document from the downloaded .zip file.

You would think they would have the bugs worked out by now: it IS, after all, the Second Edition!