Customer Reviews

Designing With JavaScript : Creating Dynamic Web Pages (Web Review Studio Series)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

When you first get started with this book, it's fun to see how easily you can do the first few scripts and it's great to see your page displaying your own code.

After the first few examples, however, I found myself ready for a "real" resource on javascript. The author's tone sometimes seems to tend toward "you don't need to know this" and he therefore abruptly stops talking about something. Well, I DO need to know it if I'm going to apply the lessons to my own projects, and just because I don't have a lot of programming experience doesn't mean that I was having trouble keeping up.

The book is not so good as a reference, for that reason, because if you look up an operation, it will ONLY tell you how to do the specific project in the book. It won't give you an overview of that subject, nor will it explain why the project works.

Also, most of the projects in the book are outdated by now (no fault of the author's) so at this time you can not only find a simpler and more reliable way to acheive the same results, but the browsers no longer support his methods. A lot of the things he'll tell you about what browsers can and can't do are obsolete, and his guesses about what will be used in the future have turned out wrong. Plus, a lot of his methods were never safe to use on multiple browsers.

But the most important flaw I found in this book is the fact that there are typos and mistakes in the code examples. You can type in the code exactly as written in the book and it won't work. In some cases this could be because you're not using the browser he was thinking of, but in many cases you can turn the page and see the code written again, but it's got a small but significant change. You can compare both pages, looking for the differences and guessing which one is correct, but when you're just learning javascript it's a shame to have to debug someone else's code!

I found this book to be geared for someone who isn't interested in learning any programming skills at all. If you want to copy code out of a book and not have to do anything else then this is a great book for you.

But, I'll caution even the experienced programmers, not all of the code in this book works, and there are a lot of typos. The book should have been proof read much better, since most of the typos are in the code examples. All of the typos in the book makes learning javascript very confusing and frustrating. Especially when you copy the code letter for letter and it doesn't work due to a typo(that your friend has to find for you 2 days later).

I bought the book to compliment my other O'Reilly HTML books and to start to learn Javascript. And I have taken a lot of knowledge out of this book but I also found it very useful to have another reference book on hand to explain in further detail what different pieces of the code were doing.

The author has tried to make it as easy as possible by telling you that you don't need to know certain things about javascript, when in fact, you may just need that information. I think he could have included the information on one of the many sidebars ans let you and me, the readers, decide on what information we need.

All in all, I'll didn't read through every page of the book because I got lost in reading other resource books , which I needed to explain the parts of javascript that this book didn't explain. I still use the book for reference but only as a guide on how to layout the code for a certain project or to get ideas on what to do next.

If you've been writing HTML for a while and want to get into javascripting this is a good start. You don't have to learn the language of javascript, but instead learn by doing some projects. The projects are really what most people want javscript for anyway: using forms, frames, cookies, and image rollovers. It helps to have a little programming background already. The fact that the book is a little out of date actually helps because everything covered has already been implemented in both browsers by now. One problem I had was the included CD which has the examples come up in HTML, but it comes up as source text instead of a working example. It should have both (or just the working example since you can always view source on your own). Since the data on the CD is only about 3 or 4 MB it's not like they were short on space. If you will do a lot of javscripting you will probably need to buy a more complete reference eventually.

I purchased this book based on my admiration for the author's tutorials at his website, which can be extremely helpful for both professional and novices. Also, I've long been a fan of O' Reilly's books in general.

Unfortunately, the book itself fell way short of my expectations. Not only is it filled with inaccuracies and full-tilt errors (many of which, the last time I checked, had been missed by the online errata pages), but the author tends to use over-complicated techniques where much more simple ones are not only more appropriate, but are common knowledge thoughout the industry. While this book seems to appeal to novice JavaScript-ers, it truly does them a dis-service by providing them with such a "broken" knowledge of the language. This is also compounded by the author's "For Dummies" attitude of mostly providing bare-bones information, in effect saying "just copy what I'm telling you here...don't worry so much about WHY you need to do this and WHY it works" (or in many cases in this book: WHY it fails because of the errors!). It's one thing to want to provide the novice with the essentials of a language to get him/her up and going quickly, but it's another to do so at the sake of code accuracy and efficiency (both of which ultimately makes things EASIER for the novice...!).

As far as the so-called "easy, real-world" nature of this book others here have mentioned, I can say this as a professional in the industry: many times I've had to come in and correct errors to JavaScript code that came directly from this book. Just as many times I've had the people who's code I had to fix point to the Heinle book and say "Gee...but it seemed so simple in this book, but when I tried to use it myself it blew up." THESE sort of "real-world" examples, the results of relying too much on this kind of book, should make it clear how it can be more of a detriment than an asset to someone just trying to figure out JavaScript.

It really bothers me to have this opinion of this book because, as I mentioned earlier, I really LIKE the tutorials available on the author's own website! He certainly seems to have a solid grasp of the language. But once it went to printed form, well...here's yet another reason to support "paperless" media, I guess. So if you're looking for a good solid JavaScript tutorial, forget the book and go straight to the author's website instead (which, by the way, is chock-full of pitches for the book...ignore 'em). You'll be better off...and it's cheaper. Also: look into "JavaScript, The Definitive Guide" (also from O' Reilly books), and "JavaScript Unleashed" (from Sams Net). While both tend to be the "dry" kind of book others here have mentioned, you'll find you'll get way more out of them in the long-run, especially if you take, or even plan to take, JavaScript seriously and on a professional level.

Nick is clearly an extremely talented code writer, but this in itself does not equip him well to teach others. He seems impatient with his readers, and this one is left feeling very confused. Many of the examples lack cross browser compatability; one even includes a visual basic script which seems laughable, given the title of the book. The text accompanying the examples is irritating because it is often not clear which words are javascript syntax and which are not. Bizarre formatting of the code on the bundled CDrom does not make for an easy ride, either.

1) Almost ALL example sites in the book are outdated! When u are asked to refer to a site, most likely it is GONE already! 2) The CD does not include all the files. Missing gif files, html files..... You can't run all the tutorial. Someone was in a hurry to make a buck and forgot to put all the files together. For a book that relies on sample sites and tutorial, this book fails to deliever fully. Shop around for a better book if u are serious.

I've taken an online course in Javascript and already owned the O'Reilly Javascript book (good, but super dense). I could do a few scripts, but only by rote. I was not understanding exactly what was going on.

For my skills and abilities Designing with Javascript was right on. Nick, the young author, uses superior examples and highly detailed descriptions on what's going on at each point in the script. Very useful.

Within hours of receiving this book, I wrote my first moderately complex script and actually understood what I was doing!! Way to go Nick, keep up the good work.

Definitely worth the price of admission.

Are you a budding rose in the information rat-race of the internet? Need client side form validation that actually works? Want to add spice and vigor to your boring, 2 dimentional web site? Look no further than this book. Nick Heinle is one of the smartest people of our generation. This book takes a healthy cut of the Javascript world and serves it up in tender, meaty chunks for your digesting pleasure. The stable platform of JavaScript programming that I stand on today was designed, build, and painted to match my pants by this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is NOT a JavaScript programmer, but needs more than a cut-n-paste solution to a problem. Advanced programmers, keep looking.

I am an advanced programmer/webmaster, and I found this book to contain clear, concrete, and usable examples of javascript. Pedagogy is very clear, both for beginners and novices. CD comes with code that works. Buy this book if you want to learn or incorporate javascript into your web pages.

Code always contains browser type checking to provide compatibility with browser types.

New edition is due out August 2000 so you might want to get that edition.

This book is excellent. The scripts Heinle uses as examples throught the book are easy to understand & modify to suit your needs. But more importantly, a lot of the scripts aren't just for show. Most of them have a practical purpose & can be used for important functions like form validation & browser detection.