JavaScript Objects [Paperback]

Tom Myers (Author), Alexander D. Nakhimovsky (Author), Tom Meyers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1998

This book makes object-oriented programming accessible and understandable to web developers. It gives great real world examples, which will work for those who only understand enough about HTML and scripting to insert them in their web pages. Plus JavaScript Objects goes on to show how to customize examples for those with greater knowledge of scripting. This enables more experienced readers to go on and build their own tools and demonstrates the powers of JavaScript as an object-oriented programming language, which has far more potential for the development of large scale applications than is currently appreciated.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This is a book of JavaScript tools and projects for people who make web pages, and the programmers and future programmers who work with them. It can be used for self study, for web authoring, for web application programming, and as a textbook in a college course on "Object-Oriented Programming in JavaScript."

About the Author

Tom taught computer science at the University of Delaware and at Colgate before becoming a full-time programmer (while occasionally teaching a course or two at Colgate). He is the author of Equations, Models and Programs: A Mathematical Introduction to Computer Science (Prentice Hall 1988) and several theoretical articles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1st edition (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861001894
• ISBN-13: 978-1861001894
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,591,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a Remarkable Discovery, January 20, 2000

By 

Kevin Knox (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JavaScript Objects (Paperback)

I had hoped to learn how to jazz up my Domino Web-pages from a JavaScript book. When I got it home, I found something completely different inside.

This is a book about how to implement serious data handling with a serious object oriented programming language.

The authors cover all the basic JavaScript language and browser connections in the first 75 pages. They leave out a lot of glitzy tricks that you really need, but you can get those off any web-based tutorial after you really understand the language.

Once they leave the basics, they cover genuine oo programming in a serious and educational way. They explain what they are doing, and they explain *WHY* brilliantly. It is an excellently written book and a lot of fun to read.

If you are hoping to create a snazzy web-site without much work, you will find this book frustrating. If you want to understand JavaScript to the bone, and learn how to extend it as far as the eye can see, you WILL be able to outdo all the snazzy web-sites when you are done.

The book is incredible.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book takes the do-it-yourself programmer to a new level., July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: JavaScript Objects (Paperback)

This book is a welcome addition for someone who wants to get the most out of JavaScript. It goes beyond cranking out cool applets, and goes into the fundamentals of object oriented programming using JS. If you know and use JavaScript, be prepared to re-learn and considerably extend what you know. Those coming from an O-O background such as C++ should should find a relatively simple transition -- getting used to the quirks of JavaScript and its relationship to HTML will be the main challenge. There is nothing silly about this book even though it is written with wit and style. Also, it's written by a couple of guys who really know what they're talking about and don't have anything to prove to anyone. [e.g., I'm smarter than you (the reader or some other author.)] Essentially, they lay on a major course in object oriented programming using JavaScript for Big Programs -- not little applets. So, if you just want to learn JavaScript for cranking in some cool applets into your HTML, pass on this book, or at least wait until you want to do something more, do it better, and do it with style. A couple of things bothered me about this book, and both could be improved -- but not necessarily by the authors. In part, I should have seen it coming since the book is suggested for a graduate course in computer programming. Being a 'learn-it-on-my-own' programmer, they skipped over a lot of the baby steps. Getting through Chapter 2 took weeks rather than hours. I believe they put too much into Chapter 2 -- Programming with Objects. That chapter needed a better transition for those coming from HTML and/or simple JavaScript. Breezing through a global function that replaced a literal, and then showing how to do it better using a method took me a long time to fully grasp.(And I'm still gasping and grasping.) For a book that is to be in the Trade Market and not the university bookstore (or technical bookstore) needs more examples. Chapter 9 takes the reader 'Beyond JavaScript' and that's all good, but rather than devoting about a third of the book to going beyond anything, I wish there had been more and clearer examples using object oriented programming and JavaScript. A variety of stand-alone examples rather than developing a giant program. A second issue that bothered me is the fact that this book is written for IE (Internet Explorer) only. This is not the authors' fault--it's Netscape's. Since I prefer Netscape Communicator over IE (and a Mac over a Windows PC), I was miffed that I had to use IE 4.5 and not IE 5. If Netscape and AOL adopt the Object Oriented model in their next (Number 5?) version of Navigator, I'll be delighted. Otherwise, I and others will be forced into using IE -- not a fate worse than death, but uncomfortable for those of us who like Net Nav. The appendices are thorough not only in their content but in their Object Oriented arrangement. This is a 5 star quality book with a 1 star ease-of-learning curve. I would recommend it serious only to those who are seriously contemplating spending some serious head time with it or for the pros who know Object Oriented programming and crank out code like candy. It is not a starting point for learning JavaScript. Before picking up this book, really learn JavaScript. Then when you get this book, you learn how little you really know and add humility to your array of sterling qualities. It did for me.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thinking clearly in a scripting language, March 9, 2000

By 

Stavros Macrakis (Cambridge, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: JavaScript Objects (Paperback)

Your code can benefit from object-oriented programming even if your language doesn't support it directly. Javascript provides more support for O-O programming than (say) C, although much less than Java.

JSO shows you how to write client-side applications in object-oriented Javascript. It leads you through useful examples using the technique, demonstrating that you can do many sophisticated and useful things with this 'scripting' language.

For very experienced programmers, this will at times be a slow, but most developers will benefit from the close attention to the code.

JSO doubles as a concise introduction and reference to Javascript, covering it better in 80 pages than those bricks in the bookstore do in 1200.

The strength of this book is also its weakness. Since it focusses on client-side functionality, its example of client/server Web programming is unrealistically tilted towards providing all functionality on the client. But, given the current state of the art, I can't think of a better way of doing this without spending too much time on server-side issues. Along the same lines, the current incompatibilities among implementations force it to be browser-specific (Internet Explorer).

Overall, this is probably the best book on client-side Javascript programming -- as long as you don't care about cross-browser compatibility.