Customer Reviews

JavaScript by Example

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Wether or not this book is right for you, really depends on what you need from a Javascript text book. Armed with some basic knowledge of HTML, this was the perfect text to put me up to speed on the topic. There are many examples (as the title implies), giving you an exhaustive treatment of all topics. This treatment doesn't leave anything out, and though it would be nice to have the answers to the exercises, anything which stumps you can be solved by going over the examples again.

There are many explanations for every example given, but it's quite easy to skip around to what you need if you know some of the material already.

Excellent self-study tool.

Please Rate the overall value of the book from 1-5:
5=Well done! This book will be a valuable teaching and reference tool.

Please rate the instructional value of the book from 1-5:
4=I would recommend this book to someone interested in its topic.

Please rate the reference value of this book from 1-5 where:
5=A complete reference. I would not need any additional reference on this topic.

This is an excellent book for beginners of Javascript. it takes simplest of the cases without boggling the minds of the readers. when I learnt javacript more than 4 years back, Ihad a hard time reading through 'verbose' books. I wish I had this book at that time.

This author has taken the time to explain the concepts in the simplests of the ways. there are adequate screen prints to highlight the results of the executed javascript code. the author explains the document object model clearly for the benefit of the beginners and also explains different ways of identifying the items in the page.

This is an excellent reference book for intermediate javascript programmers adn this book has found a place in my reference shelf and I will be glad to recommend this book to anybody interested in learning Javascript.

JavaScript is most often used in a browser on the client side. It is a scripting language that can make vanilla HTML pages more interactive. By now it, like HTML, is very stable. And if you design web pages, it is a good addition to your skill set. Being stable and popular means that there is no shortage of books on it. So on what basis should you prefer this book?

Well, it takes its title very literally. The pedagogy really does emphasise copious examples. In a typical chapter, the examples take up over half the space. Plus each chapter includes a problem set. Yay! You need to learn by doing. Yet so many computer books omit this. Granted, some topics require so many parts to interoperate that writing problems is nontrivial. But to test JavaScript code, all you need is a browser, text editor and a web server. These days, all computers have the first two items. And, in the context of you wanting to learn JavaScript, you DO have a web server that you can load files onto, don't you?

My only quibble is that I wish there were more problems in each chapter. This could take up very little extra room, say a page per chapter. But it would roughly triple the number of problems, and give the reader an even more exhaustive exploration of the topics.

A few discrepancies between the examples, explanations, and especially the CD, eg: where I think she changed a file or variable name in one place and forgot to change it in the other, so you spend some time trying to reconstruct what she meant to say.
Otherwise well paced, good for learning.

Note the positive reviews are for the first edition -- 2002 or 2003.
Almost bought this but found it at my local library -- feel lucky about that.
The examples are very out of date -- I'm guessing not updated from the first edition.
Deprecated code throughout. Font tags, centered elements, elements with inline widths, bold tags, etc.
Script looks old too. The overview mentions the DOM but the code examples make extensive use of document.write which is not DOM or XHTML friendly.
CSS isn't introduced until near the end of the book (page 527) with a reference to "CSS Enhanced Browsers" (or as they are called this century -- "Browsers").
Maybe there is some good stuff in here but the antiquated examples suggest that the practices are outdated too.
I do not usually write reviews but the antiquated examples in this book compelled me to warn against it.

I am an intermediate programmer, and have developed an appreciation for clear, concise, and meaningful resource materials. I have had great success in gaining knowledge and insight through the use of Ms. Quigley's books; especially Perl by Example. I had the occasion to learn JavaScript, and sifted for days through the convoluted maze of obtusely written learning materials. I remembered how much I enjoyed learning Perl using Ms. Quigley's book, and found JavaScript by Example, which proved to be a clearly written, well organized, relevant, and accessible resource. JavaScript by Example was just what I needed to get the ball rolling; it kept me interested, instead of boring me to death. I highly recommend it to programmers of all skill levels. The book covers everything from beginning to advanced concepts, and includes software that is easy to use, and compliments the written material nicely. Bravo Ms. Quigley, bravissimo!

Unfortunately I'm unable to comment on the quality of the text itself due to the unreadability of the code on the Kindle.

Having bought this book to learn Javascript (why else would you buy it?) I was extremely disappointed that most of the code examples appear in grey, unreadable image blocks. Actually I think the point is that in this "Kindle ebook" they are rendered as images rather than text, so you therefore have to scroll up to them whenever they appear by clicking the up key on the kindle device, then zoom into the image, then turn the device around to read the image/code in landscape fashion, then find that the code is still more or less unreadable within the image as in most cases it's too still too small/ blurred.

It also appears that the kindle book costs more than the paperback. All in all a bad purchase.

I haven't programmed a computer since my good ol' Commodore 64 back in the 80's. The last computer language I used was Basic 2.0. So when I wanted to learn Javascript, I started searching online and at local retailers for a book that would ease me through the process of learning as a beginner. This book is brilliant for that purpose. Each section starts out with an explanation, followed by code, followed by description of what each line of code does. I haven't finished reading the book, but so far, I couldn't have asked for anything more.

A++

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a beginner and wants to learn Javascript.

The book starts off with little bit of history about Javascript and then goes about telling
the features of Javascript. If you are a Java or C# programmer then you can quickly scan and
skip the first 10 chapters.

Later the author covers about BOM (Browser Object Model) and DOM (Document Object Model).
The author also covers about CSS, AJAX and JSON and explained so that even novice can
understand the concepts clearly.

There are lot of examples and each example is explained clearly line by line. Also the
do it yourself exercises at the end of each chapter helps the reader to reinforce his/her
understanding of the covered topic.

At last, a Javascript book that is understandable for beginners. I have been looking for a while at various texts, even those titled for beginners, but nobody could really explain it to beginners in easy understandable English.

That's what I enjoy about this book. Sure, there is plenty of jargon speak, but it makes sense the way it is explained and shown in examples. I've only started on a couple of chapters so far, but I am enjoying it.

One thing I picked up was the out-dated html used in the examples. This is probably a carry-over from the first edition. If you're not worried about currency issues, they work fine. I just modify them using css in the head section.

Great book so far...Bobby