Customer Reviews

MooTools 1.2 Beginner's Guide

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

 

 

There were two things I really didn't like about this book. First, I'm frustrated with the author's understanding of the purpose of Mootools. Mootools is a framework that intends to restructure javascript into a more scalable programming language. However, the author instead treats the language as if it were jQuery, going so far as to call the DOM selector functions the "bread and butter of MooTools". I was frankly horrified by this statement. DOM manipulation is only a small subset of MooTools. The true bread and butter is actually the class object of MooTools, which can be used for much more than just messing around with web pages. The author fails to teach the reader the true power of MooTools and the reason it's called a framework and not a library.

The second aspect of this book that frustrates me is how the author deliberately copies images and code repetitively to increase the page count. For example, when writing a block of code, the author writes down line 1-10, explains it, than writes lines 1-20, explains it, 1-43 and so on until you've seen the same piece of code no less than 10 times. As another example, the author loves to use pointless images to teach the reader what is happening. In one section, he makes a box, moves it right, widens it, hides it, shows it, and moves it back left. He then proceeds to show an image of a browser of each step of this process, as if words weren't enough. This results in four pages of images that were completely unnecessary.

Due to the author's misunderstanding of MooTools existence and flagrant page filling techniques, this book took me less than two hours to get through. There is no reason anyone should buy this book. If you want to use MooTools to exploit the methods described in this book, mainly DOM manipulation, plugin writing, and AJAX, use jQuery instead. If you want to learn what the builders of MooTools intended for the language, buy another book.

MooTools 1.2 Beginner's Guide is an outstanding book. It aims to provide a solid foundation for MooTools new comers, and assumes a limited knowledge of Javascript, HTML, and CSS. It is not just a laundry list of MooTool function definitions, but at provides a complete coverage of how MooTools geared towards a beginner. I highly recommend it.
This is a superb book and excellent resource not just to learn MooTools, but the authors also succeed in installing some pretty important general programming concepts. The authors far exceeded my expectations for this title, and although I have been using MooTools fairly regularly for almost two years, I too picked up a few things.
This is truly a great foundational type of book, not just for MooTools but for web development in general. This book, I believe, has done something I feel is very much needed for MooTools to really take off even more than it has - it has made the framework very approachable and attractive to people not just trying to decide what JS framework to use, but also to those people who aren't even sure what a framework is.
It's fun and easy to read, chock full of code samples that are thoroughly explained and screen shots. I went through every example, and found only one occurrence of a minor error in the code provided - most books are ripe with coding errors, but this book really has none. The code is beautifully structured and everything is clearly explained and laid out.
If you're remotely interested in MooTools, Javascript, or using a Javascript framework - get this book. It is one of the best beginner type of books I have had the pleasure to come across.

If I were just picking up MooTools (or JavaScript) I think that this book would feel like downloading MooTools was an adventure. It opens up a world of cool functionality that anyone can apply to their work without much effort. If I were a good programmer - and maybe already well versed in JavaScript - I'd probably finish the book and have a lot of questions, most of which can be answered by reading materials online or, better yet, downloading MooTools and reading the source itself.

As a beginner's guide, the book is very successful. If you're new to MooTools, and especially if you're new to JavaScript, and you're thinking of buying one MooTools book, this is definitely the one to get.

Read a longer review here:
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I enjoyed reading every line of it. Wow. It made me love Mootools and stick with it.

I created my first ajax powered website with it. I was so surprised and delighted to see how easy is to create ajax application with Mootools.

The book was so easy to read and full of practical examples. I learn by doing

I sincerely believed that by the end of this book I have traveled further along the ajax technology road and have fulfilled a range of useful and important learning outcomes.

I hope the author will write a second volume for more advanced users. Maybe with more ajax and PHP integration.

Thanks for your wonderful book and keep the good job.

I was very impressed with this book and I believe it's the perfect book for any developer looking to enter the MooTools pastures. My only major desire is that the book cover MooTools' native object prototype modification; beside that oversight, I'd recommend this book to both rookie and novice MooTools developers. MooTools 1.2 Beginner's Guide should be required reading for MooTools developers looking to master the basic of MooTools.

I have to say, I was split between learning jQuery/MooTools. Both are popular and both are powerful, but the question is which one do you want to learn? It depends on what you want to achieve.

jQuery makes the DOM fun, if you just want to manipulate elements via CSS and HTML attributes, jQuery is fine. It gives you a portion of the power of JavaScript and the syntax is like CSS.

MooTools on the other hand aims to make JavaScript fun, it gives you all the power of JS, but it's steeper and you need to really bite into the code to catch on. That being said, this was the framework for me. I was going to do jQuery earlier, but then I learned of its limits via it being targeted at the DOM. I like the class based nature of MooTools and since I plan on writing OOP PHP very soon, it'll look quite similar. MooTools job is to extend JS's native functions to meet what modern users expect from applications and to strip away browser quirks that make people avoid JS in the first place.

This book does a great job at taking you and dipping you headfirst into the code. It teaches some theory, but it's all about experimenting and being practical after that. It shows MooTools syntax, why use MT in the first place, and how to perform various tasks with MT. Right now I'm selecting elements via the DOM with the $ and $$ selector function. I recommend anyone buy this book if you want to get practical with MT, I dig it.

MooTools may be steep but it's great fun, if you want to harness the power of raw JS with elegant syntax and modernized functions, this is it baby.

The book aims primarily to beginner MooTools developers, but may also be a good reference for users of previous versions willing to update their scripts.

That said, the book doesn't cover all of the methods offered by the library, but is intended by the authors as a step by step introduction to MooTools development and gives a solid knowledge of its undergoing philosophy.

The approach is strongly examples-oriented to better and clearly show how the library works and to give some starting point for developers willing to practice hands-on.

The Good Parts

The guide's table of contents spans from the core $ function to the plugin's usage and factoring, introducing the most relevant and commonly used part of the library. Writing is fluent and familiar keeping it easy while accurate.

I really appreciated the well done part about utility functions which are, in my opinion, one of the library's key features since they make possible to save lot of repetitive coding: functions like $type, $each or the Browser object grant a cross-browser and risk free development with little effort.

The other aspect which is deeply covered is the Class construction pattern.
By using this pattern every novice developer is able to code JavaScript classes with syntax similar to other programming languages like PHP, thus filling the lack of real classes in JavaScript and avoiding global object pollution.

A full chapter at the end of the book is dedicated to plug-in development.
This part has been an unexpected surprise, since few guides intended for technical audience teach code's design process with design sheets and documentation guidelines.

Beyond Examples

Talking about library presentation, it'd be a good idea to explain more in details some DOM manipulation methods, since many developers are used to circumvent (often too roughly) document and CSS limits by cutting and remixing elements with JavaScript.
MooTools has a big list of such methods which often are a better choice than native JS both for performance and browsers' support.

Conclusions

As a whole, MooTools 1.2 Beginners Guide gives a clear and solid basic knowledge of how the library works, making it possible for a novice developer to dive into the official documentation without feeling lost.

Even if some background thoughts about its development patterns would be appreciated, I'd definitely suggest the book to MooTools beginners (but not to JavaScript beginners for the mentioned reason).
Moreover it's a quick reference for commonly used methods and classes, therefore a book to keep on your desk.

This book takes the tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them approach. It even adds in a tell them what I'm telling you now and then. This is overkill for me, but it's easy to skip most of it. For beginners, the hand holding may prove useful. Overall, the book was a quick read and gave a good overview of the library.