JavaScript [Paperback]

Don Gosselin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1423901509 | ISBN-13: 978-1423901501 | Publication Date: September 7, 2007 | Edition: 4

JavaScript, Fourth Edition is designed as a guide for beginning programmers to develop Web applications using the JavaScript programming language. It introduces a variety of techniques, focusing on what students need to know to start adding JavaScript to their Web pages. In each chapter, students perform tasks that focus on a particular technique required for building and creating JavaScript programs. The examples and exercises in this book will help students learn the basics of how to use JavaScript with well-formed Web pages, including how to manipulate the browser object model, validate forms, use object-oriented techniques, and learn how to trace and resolve errors in JavaScript programs, to name a few. Advanced topics include how to manage state information, use the Dynamic Object Model (DOM), create Dynamic HTML (DHTML), update Web pages with AJAX, and create server-side scripts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 700 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology; 4 edition (September 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423901509
• ISBN-13: 978-1423901501
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Many mistakes and few helpful examples, May 21, 2008

By 

Fluff City Mama (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JavaScript (Paperback)

I second what nkwebmama said, and then some. Not only are there many mistakes in the code (some of which are in the corrections on their site but many of which are not), but the approach used in the book makes those mistakes more of a problem than usual in this kind of a book.

The book fails in four regards: errors, content, pacing, and unhelpful examples.

Each chapter in this book asks the learner to copy the code in the book, as written, into an html document, and that is how it 'teaches' JavaScript. This isn't the best approach, but when it's compounded by incorrect code, it makes it extremely difficult for the student. There is only minimal explanation, you are just supposed to copy the code and go with it. It's a lot of typing for not much reward. This isn't my first programming language, but I am struggling to get much out of this book, and the others in my class are really lost.

The book tries to teach programming and the language together, which is a standard approach, but goes terribly wrong here. The pacing in this book is far too fast for someone who doesn't know programming, and the content is too heavy on basic programming and way too light on how to actually use JavaScript for someone who does.

It's also not enough to show how something works if the book don't also show how and when to use it, and that is where this book really falls down. For newbies, it barely touches on how to construct a program, which leaves them lost, and that's not the only basic concept the book leaves out. Just copying code from a book into a document doesn't really teach you how to use it.

For someone who does know something about programming, it's nice to be shown how to actually use the language to accomplish something interesting, and this book doesn't do that well either. For that, a book usually has some good examples of useful things to do with whatever built-in features the language has, such as regular expressions. Here, the examples for that are short, plain, and don't really show you how to do anything with them except check for single characters, while the explanations get increasingly dense and technical as the examples get shorter - not a good combo no matter what your level of experience.

I wouldn't recommend this as a textbook, and I really wouldn't recommend it for someone trying to learn JavaScript on their own, no matter what their level of experience.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too many typos, January 22, 2008

By 

nkwebmama (Poulsbo, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JavaScript (Paperback)

Although the content is for the most part good, I have found after just two chapters that there are so many typos (tags not closed properly, etc.) and left out content (such as CDATA statements,) the lessons end up generating JavaScript errors and don't validate, so you have to go back and modify the script on your own - not an easy task when you are just learning, since you have to research the issue using alternate resources. It appears that the author copy-and-pasted his errors into further examples. In addition, you are asked to type comments that are not explained, so you don't know why you are including them. Also, in one of the Case Projects in chapter 1, you are asked to try to fix a problem that is not addressed until Chapter 2. I am taking JavaScript as a college course, and our class is a little frustrated.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Please don't make your students use this text., October 12, 2008

By 

Prof. KungFuFlipperBaby "KungFuFlipperBaby" (Brooklyn, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JavaScript (Paperback)

Nothing's more frustrating than being forced to plunk down close to $100 for a text book this poorly written and edited. The only reason this book is ever assigned is because because it has "plug and play" functionality with a couple of the big online classroom technologies (like the incredibly flawed Blackboard) utilized by several institutions of higher learning. The book is poorly organized and the amount of typos really does make the student less able to learn the material.

Basically, assigning this text to your students is admitting that you do not give a #$%*! about whether they learn the material.