Customer Reviews

Javascript for Macintosh

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

 

 

What ever the publishers and other reviews might say, DO NOT buy this book if you have little or no programing experience. Yes, there is a chapter on the History of JavaScript, its differences between Java, and C++, and even a catchy intro chapter on what you can do with JavaScripts and some URL's to some very nifty sites. But once the book gets into the meat of programing, I was left in the dust. I had to read and reread every paragraph three or four times. It offers NO education on the complex syntax structure of JavaScripts, or how to include the scripts into HTML. The first page of chapter three simply states, "You need to know this before going on," but offers NO, and I mean NO instruction on this matter. (I do not know how the authors thought I might pick that up.) It then jumps straight into a complex discussion of Decimal, Octal, and Hexadecimal representations of Integers. WHAT? Did I miss somewhere that this book has a prerequisite of a Ph.D. in calculus? The frequent tables that are supposed to help clarify the text contain cryptic codes, comands and operations that only do the opposite. I am VERY unhappy

I suppose it might make a good book-shelf reference once I find a book that truly teaches me how to program JavaScript.

I first learned JavaScript from this book. This book walks the reader through all of the facets of the language in a clear and concise manner. This book is worth it's weight in gold. Later on I moved up to Danny Goodman's JavaScript Bible and David Flanigan's JavaScript The Definitive Guide. I would recommend that anyone first getting their feet wet in JavaScript to read JavaScript for Macintosh. All of the code works on both PC's and Mac's as long as the user has a 4.x browser.

I agree with the other reviewer that this book is probably not for beginners. Those with some programming experience shouldn't have much of a problem, however. Although it's a very good reference book, it is somewhat outdated now with JavaScript 1.2 (or whatever the latest version is)...at the writing of this book, Arrays hadn't even been implemented. I suggest a more recent book (who cares if it's "for" Windows, JavaScript is JavaScript).

What ever the publishers and other reviews might say, DO NOT buy this book if you have little or no programing experience. Yes, there is a chapter on the History of JavaScript, its differences between Java, and C++, and even a catchy intro chapter on what you can do with JavaScripts and some URL's to some very nifty sites. But once the book gets into the meat of programing, I was left in the dust.

I had to read and reread every paragraph three or four times, and it uses terms such as "flow control" and "event handlers" and other programing terms as if the entire world knew what they meant - with little or no explication of what they are.

It offers NO education on the complex syntax structure of JavaScripts, or how to include the scripts into HTML. The first page of chapter three simply states, "You need to know this before going on," but offers NO, and I mean NO instruction on this matter. (I do not know how the authors thought I might pick that up.) It then jumps straight into a complex discussion of Decimal, Octal, and Hexadecimal representations of Integers. WHAT? Did I miss somewhere that this book has a prerequisite of a Ph.D. in calculus?

The frequent tables that are supposed to help clarify the text contain cryptic codes, commands and operations that only do the opposite. I am VERY unhappy

I suppose it might make a good book-shelf reference once I find a book that truly teaches me how to program JavaScript.