Customer Reviews

Javascript Bible, 4th Edition

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

If you are a beginner, you should probably read a "...For Dummies" book or a "Learn Javascript in 24 hours" book. But if you want to get passed the basics, and need a good reference companion this book is for you.

It seems many people who havce written bad reviews for this book note that "...they do not work" however I did not have problems. you have to realize Goodman is an advocate of Netscape (but I won't hold that against him),so many examples are based on Netscape browsers. (But they also signify that "It won't work for IE). If you go to his website, he has working examples there for both browsers, so don't complain about examples not working...

I design websites for fortune 500 companies, and found this book invaluable. The index is very complete, and I can look up javascript functions,operators,and keyworks in no-time and find examples of use, and a full listing of all arugments, accessibility (whether you can get or set the values) and browser compatibility.(Much more complete than the Oreilly book)

VERDICT: Great book, and a must have for serious programmers designing production quality websites. NOT for beginners

I dont think anyone up here has yet reviewed the 4th version of this book vs 3rd version of the book. I have both and I will tell you that for the most part he has updated and re-written it: Highlights of the new book: 1. Extensive Examples There are over 300 cd examples that are very well cross referenced in the chapters as well as properties and methods. As in the 3rd edition he puts several chapters(15) on the CD that are not in the book. What is missing from book is the code snippits on the printed page. So if you dont have the CD you are pretty much hosed. Every feature is cross referenced by browser and version so you will know when that javascript feature was introduced to that browser. As previously mentioned Danny gives a lot of attention to Netscape which I personally never use but if I had to develop cross browser the information about what would and would not work would be there. In my opinion this is the best most thorough Javascript book out there. Another excellent one is the Beginning Javascript by Wrox. Having these 2 books is all I think you would ever really need

I have two major problems with this book:
1) The author has a very wordy, labored writing style. In contrast to some of the other reviewers, I found his descriptions of at least many of the examples quite long and thorough, but still not really clear. I think this must be what JavaScript for Dummies must read like. He spends vast amounts of words covering the obvious things and then neglects the interesting and less obvious stuff. I would suggest this book if you like the easiest things really really spelled out.

2) Despite having a copywrite in 2001, I am pretty sure the original version was first written around 1995. It is a bit disconcerting when he acts like you must be really on top of things if you have an operating system more recent then Windows 3.1. The Windows 3.1 htm suffixes are also a bit disconcerting.
But more to the point, he spends an awful lot of time warning you that certain features aren't available until NN2 or IE2, and what to do to accomodate older browsers. Does anyone still write web pages accommodating NN1? The book needs a major rewrite to bring it up to date, not just piling new stuff on top of the old text.

Laboring through the tedious descriptions and antiquated techniques is not worth most peoples time.

As a non-programmer (graphic designer), I am finding this book helpful. The author does a good job not assuming too much except familiarity with html. He uses real-life comparisons to make concepts understandable. The writing style is friendly and very thorough. I was struggling to learn Javascript from Paul Wilton's Beginning Javascript. This book is making things clear that I was stumped on by approaching it very methodically, building on the simplest examples. I have also ordered 'Official Netscape Javascript 1.2 Book' by Kent which I heard was beginner-friendly. I find programmers have a hard time relating to us non-programmers! Goodman seems to have a grasp of how to present these basics to the 'rest of us'.

I bought this book hoping to learn some Javascript from it, and although I eventually managed to, very little of what I learned was from this book. I found the book to be very user-unfriendly in its layout, and the index is quite bad (and incorrect in a few cases.) The examples are usually either too short or not explained at all - just a printout of some code, figure it out yourself.

Several chapters aren't in the book at all - they're only available on the CD-ROM. If I wanted to read a book on my computer, I wouldn't have bought a real-world book. Finally, chapters 43-57 aren't in the book at all - they're only in the 'gold' version of the book. Three guesses as to where they put the information you'll most want to know about...

Possibly this book would make a useful reference to an experienced Javascript programmer, but for someone trying to learn the language, stay far away from this book.

I'm more than half way through this book and must say that it is very complete in it's coverage. The writer clearly is coming from a Netscape background here with numerous references to Internet Explorer's short comings. He seems to tout NN6's great compliance with the W3C DOM but neglects to mention that NN4 is nearly worthless for scripting. In many of the examples the author clearly shows that certain features have been available since IE4 and only recently adopted in NN6. If you don't mind the the sometimes subtle pot shots at IE, the lack of any concrete examples in the book and the fact that you must reference the CD, which is in itself rather hard to "Navigate", and the fact that some chapters, the advanced ones but the ones that I really wanted to read, are only on the CD then I recommend that you buy this book. What I really wanted was an all-encompassing JavaScript reference book WITH examples. I stress the book part! I can't take my desktop with me and in order to get the full effect of the book you NEED to use the CD. I'd wait for the 5th edition of which I am sure will be coming shortly. Hopefully by then they will have realized their mistakes in making the CD mandatory.

I bought this book because I wanted a JavaScript reference that was current. Before that I was using the JavaScript reference section in "Dynamic HTML - The Definitive Guide" also by Goodman. That book served as an excellent reference. "JavaScript Bible" however is horrible. Many topics aren't covered in the book. The index refers you to the CD and then the topics cannot be found on the CD. This is extremely frustrating.

I just looked up NN4 Events and was directed to CD-226 (I can't believe this topic wouldn't warrant its own page in the book). Then I discovered CD-226 doesn't exist on the CD. This seems to be the case whenever I try to reference something in "JavaScript Bible". Wading through the pdf version of the book on CD is extremely time consuming and often the pages don't exist.

I still use my 1998 copy of "Dynamic HTML" as my JavaScript reference and use "JavaScript Bible" as a door stop. I want my money back.

I bought this thinking it was the ultimate Javascript reference. What keeps it from being as thorough as it could be is the awful structure. A large part of the book isn't even in the book; it's on the CD-ROM. So, part of the book correlates to what's on the CD, but a VERY large part does not. Another thing about that that ... is that much of that large part is comprised of advanced Javascript.

So, it's great to have a syntax reference, but it's not even very thorough about that.

I'm a bit disappointed.

I purchased two O'Reilly Books to get up to speed with Browser Based GUI: Dynamic HTML 'The Definitive Reference' and JavaScript 'The Definitive Guide'. I found both books to be excellent, but I was looking for a more advanced and in depth resource. Since the Dynamic HTML Definitive Reference was written by Goodman, I looked into his other works. Thus, I purchased the JavaScript Bible Combo Packet (JavaScript Bible plus JavaScript Examples). Although the coverage is through, the quality did not approach the O'Reilly Combo. Just my two cents. ...

The best JavaScript book on the market, now also covering IE5+, NN6 and W3C DOM browser topics are covered in detail.
There is a lot of content here, almost too much and it may even be hard to find. I think Goodman reached the point where splitting everything into two different books could make more sense. One nasty downside is that eight chapters are available only from the CD