Customer Reviews

JavaScript Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book definitely deserves 5 stars right now! Perhaps in 2-3 years it will appear dated as browsers and standards evolve. But for right now, this is _the_ Javascript/DOM reference to own. Wootton has seemingly gone to great lengths to compile a comprehensive reference, the likes of which I have yet to see in print or on the Web. As far as tutorials and most other forms of hand-holding go, you won't find any-it is a reference afterall.

Cross-browser compatability is of critical importance for most of us when working with Javascript/DOM and that fact was not lost on Wootton. Most every topic has a table of supporting implementations. And while this feature is certainly not unique to only this book, it is up-to-date, covering IE 3.0-5.5, NS 3.0-6.0, Opera 3-5, Netscape Enterprise Server, the ECMAScript 3rd edition standard, and DOM 1-3. The format of the data is rather good as well, better than many of the Wrox books I have seen to date.

What I liked best about the book is the CDROM that comes with it. It contains the full compilation of 3,500 topics (!!!) in HTML and Acrobat files, only half of which could find room in the book (the book is roughly 973 pages long already, if you doubled that you couldn't lift it ;-). They have a similar look-and-feel to Java API docs. A very handy tool for Web development teams!

I like to call this book enhanced "intellisense", for those of you familiar with Microsoft development environments. It basically is a listing of objects and all of their methods and properties on different browsers. But it offers little detail such as examples. It will give you a "WARNING" about a particular method, but often doesn't tell you what you're being warned about.

If you already know how to use a javascript method but are just curious about which browsers support it, this book is helpful. Otherwise, you should purchase "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" by Flanagan. I can't wait until Flanagan comes up with a fourth edition because the latest one is getting outdated, but it is by far the best JavaScript book.

JavaScript Programmer's Reference is just not worth the money. Most of the information it provides is available via help files, and the book does not provide an useful index, but instead lumps everything into alphabetical order. Very disappointing.

This is alphabetically arrangement of unrelated concepts that only have in common that theyre are linked to JavaScript.

This is pretty much useless if you are looking for an anwer to a meaningful question. It is only useful in the case where you know the class/method and are looking for the table "which browser does it support it".

I definitely do not recommend it.

This book has almost no value (aside from a door stop). The information is incomplete, even for the time it was written. I applaud the effort of running scripts to ferret out "undocumented" information but even that information is presented in a useless fashion. Skip this book even when it is stacked high on the remainder pile.

If you get anything useful out of Cliff Wootton's book, it will be out of sheer luck. I agree with the other reviewers who gave the book one star, it is the pits.

It's unbelievable, that WROX has published this book. As a matter of fact it would be unbelievable if any publisher printed this book. It's so worthless and unusable it's a shame. No more comments. This pile of paper is not worth even one second of my time. I'm lucky that I can still return it to the bookstore. It's like someone wrote all of the words of English language without any explanation in a book and called it a dictionary.

Before reading this book, the book "Javascript-The Definite Guide" by David Flanagan is a must-have reference for every Javascript programmer. This book became my second "must-have" reference. The reason why this book is worth the money is that the examples inside the book are very much helpful to understand the Javascript in a deeper level. Too bad that Wrox has a traditionally lousy publishing format, and it caused reading uncomfortably. This book is no exceptional and that's why the "definite guide" is still No. 1. Wrox should not neglect this anymore.

I understand that this is supposed to be a reference book and not a tutorial, but even reference books usually provide some context to their information. Wooten's book is simply an alphabetical listing of many JavaScript elements (though far from complete in even that). I can't imagine that some one wanting to learn about the window open property and the window close property would want to go look under O for Open and then C for Close. Most reference books prefer to give their information in context. That is, you probably want to go to the window chapter and read about all of its properties in that context. I RARELY want to look up a JavaScript feature based on its alphabetical ordering, and if I do, I use a thing called an INDEX. I can't imagine that a programmer could make much use of this book.

I found the title of this book completely misleading -- I would never refer to this book as to "Programmer's Reference". It is more like JavaScript language history overview. If one wants to know about the history of JavaScipt or what the difference between some implementations is -- it may be right book for that purpose. But if one need to have the language reference that is easy to navigate and which contains the details important for programmers, like method arguments description and what that method does -- then this book may be a disappointment.

I was thinking about buying this book and read through it at a bookstore....I was completely confused. It did seem like a great reference book on JS but everything is organized by alpha and THERE IS NOW INDEX!!!!

It's just a cross reference which I found completely confusing and illogical.

Sorry Cliff.