Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting (Murach: Training & Reference) [Paperback]

Ray Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2009 | Series: Murach: Training & Reference

Want to create websites that deliver the fast response times, dynamic user interfaces, and special effects that today's users expect?

Then this is the book for you! Whether you're just starting out in JavaScript or whether you're ready to move into DOM scripting, it gives you the skills you need. Here's how:

#1: It's 2 books in 1: A JavaScript book and a DOM scripting book
Most books cover JavaScript or DOM scripting. But to create user-responsive sites, you need to know both.

So the first half of this book is a course in JavaScript essentials. Then, the second half is a course in DOM scripting that gives you a clear understanding of how DOM scripting works, how JavaScript underlies it, and how to use it to build applications that run slide shows, use drop-down menus, rotate headlines, sort tables, provide animation, and more!

That means you can gain basic to expert skills in a single book.

#2: It provides a fast start
Section 1 is a crash course in JavaScript. In fact, by the end of chapter 3, you'll know how to code, test, and debug applications that include elementary DOM scripting. Then, the rest of the book builds on those skills to cover all the JavaScript and DOM scripting essentials.

#3: It shows you how to create and use event-handling libraries for browser compatibility
One of the headaches of web programming is ensuring that the code will work with all the popular browsers.

So this book shows you how to create your own event-handling libraries of browser-compatible code, so you can draw on it as needed. It shows you how to take advantage of free, third-party libraries like jQuery and Dojo. And it helps you to appreciate, and profit from, the extensive libraries of tested code that are included in the downloadable applications for the book.

#4: It shows 20 complete applications that can be used as models for new apps
The key to mastering client-side web development is to have plenty of applications that show how the features interact and what problems might occur in building a website.

So this book gives you complete code for 20 professional applications. These run the gamut from business applications, like object-oriented forms validation, to entertainment apps, like a rotating, 3-dimensional carousel of images that the user can control with the mouse or keystrokes.

You can download these for free from the Murach website. Experiment with them on your own, then use them as time-saving models for new applications.

#5: The paired-pages format lets developers set their own pace
Murach books have a distinctive format. Each two-page spread presents a single topic: the lefthand page explains the topic, while the righthand page shows the critical details, using syntax, code, screen shots, and how-to notes.

Both beginning and experienced developers tell us that this format makes it easy to focus on the information they need, whether they're using the book for training or reference. Again, you can try this out for yourself by downloading chapters 2 and 3 for free from the Murach website.

So don't wait to become an expert web developer. Get your copy of Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting today!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I am a self-taught developer, and my bookshelf is a sea of royal blue Murach texts. Nothing comes close to them for clear explanations and excellent real-world demos." --Phil Holbrook

About the Author

A programmer for 24 years, Ray has the depth of experience to understand and handle all the complexities of JavaScript and DOM scripting. And having taught computer literacy, programming, information security, and web development, he has a passion for making complex subjects accessible to everyone. So let him guide you from the basic skills you can't do without to the advanced skills you won t find in any other book on the market. His book will turn you into a JavaScript expert!

Product Details

• Paperback: 764 pages
• Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates (August 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890774553
• ISBN-13: 978-1890774554
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ray Harris has been programming for 24 years. He has a Master's degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. He worked on advanced research projects at the Air Force Research Lab. He taught information security and web development at ECPI College of Technology, where he became the department head for web design. Above all, he has a passion for making complex subjects accessible to everyone.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on modern-day JavaScript development!, October 7, 2009

By 

Jason A. Salas (Dededo, Guam Guam) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting (Murach: Training & Reference) (Paperback)

I've read a ton of books on JavaScript, and Ray Harris' wonderful tome is perhaps THE best modern titles you'll find on the topic. The book is intelligently organized, and written in a concise fashion, with practical examples, delivered with a friendly voice that makes what can often be convoluted or confusing concepts easy to grasp for beginners.

On that note, the book serves as a valuable refresher for the experienced web developer wanting to get up to speed on current-day concepts or the advanced dev needing best practices in her coding. And like all Murach titles, the book doesn't inundate the reader with useless chapters of the history of the at-hand topic, it just tells you what JavaScript can do for your web applications and shows you the best, most efficient ways to do it.

In particular, I found Harris' work to have exceptional contributions of several topics: there is excellent coverage of debugging tools & techniques, featuring the latest browsers, plugins, and GUIs. The book has a wonderful discussion of how to use client-side regular expressions. And the chapters on object-oriented programming and DOM scripting are some of the best you'll find. Likewise appreciated are the discussions on JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and Dojo.

It's truly a holistic look at client-side development.

So Get out and buy this book...whatever your level, it'll be a welcome addition to your technical library!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for any web designer or developer, November 2, 2009

By 

S. Jackson (CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting (Murach: Training & Reference) (Paperback)

If you are new to web design or an old pro like me this book is a must have in my opinion. I love how it starts out with the basics like XHTML and CSS then moves on to the good stuff.

Each chapter is full of examples and sample code showing you how to do the most common techniques that you will face as a web developer/designer. I really liked the DOM scripting sections and how to manipulate the DOM on the fly. Learning object coding is so important and is key if you want to really be good at Javascript. It was cool to see the sections on JQuery and DOJO since I'm staring to use these libraries heavily on my sites.

I feel it's so important to understand not only how to build nice looking sites but to know how to code them for speed and browser compatibility. This book covers these essentials and even walks you through Firebug and how to use it to identify problem areas in your web applications. I have not seen a better book on the subject and I hope you learn just as much as I did from it. This one will be on my desk for a while!

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This Book Was Okay, But Had a Lot of Issues, January 6, 2011

By 

Mark Elders (Rolla, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting (Murach: Training & Reference) (Paperback)

I bought this item on Amazon after reading all the glowing reviews, but now that I've read all 20 chapters, I have to say that I'm disappointed with this book.

First of all, I'm not a first-time programmer. I'm a sophomore in college and I'm getting three degrees: Math, Computer Science, and Economics. I have a 4.0. I don't say this to brag; I say it to show that I know my way around a good textbook, and I know my way around programming. I've taken several programming classes in college using C++, and this summer I have a software engineering internship with a company in Kansas City. This company said I might need to use JavaScript on the job, so I bought this book to have a foundation in the language.

The format of the book is easy to read. If you open to almost any page in the book, you will see that the right-hand page has examples of JavaScript and/or XHTML code, and the left-hand page has text explaining the code on the right-hand page. A few chapters into the book, I found myself looking at the code on the right side, then reading the left page if I didn't understand the code. If all the code made sense, I still went back and read the left side to reinforce the concept in my memory. Again, this worked very well for me, and apparently many people like this style that is found in all of Murach's books.

However, there are times when it seems like the text on the left is being forced. For example, in Chapter 17, after the reader should be well acquainted with JavaScript, a paragraph on the left says, "That means that the compareColumnValues function compares the values in the current sort column and returns the appropriate number. To do that, this function gets the values that are stored in the current sort column, compares them, and returns the appropriate number." This sort of wordiness and repetition is commonplace throughout the book. I feel like the author is constrained by the format. When the code on the right is easy to understand, you run into paragraphs like the one quoted above, which are long and repetitive, but when the code on the right is somewhat complex, you often find that legitimate questions about the code go unanswered.

Sometimes you will run into a piece of code used on the right-hand page that you haven't seen before, but the paragraphs on the left won't address the code at all. Most of the time, these pieces of code are addressed later in the book, but often not for several more chapters. This happens quite often during the first half of the book, but even the second half can't seem to break this bad habit. In Chapter 14, p. 518, the author presents a library to work with keyboard events. In this library, the OR operator is used to assign a value from a group of values by selecting the one that is defined. In Chapter 18, p. 641, this usage of the OR operator is explained for the first time. In this instance, the OR operator is listed in the index, so you can look ahead to page 641 and confirm that you are understanding its usage correctly. Unfortunately, the index does not contain every JavaScript function presented in the book, so sometimes you just have to wait for the answer to come (or not to come).

On top of all this, the book has several typos and some straight up factual errors. One extremely important function, the parseInt function, is presented in Chapter 2. The book tells you, "The parseInt method converts the string that's passed to it to an integer data type. Returns NaN if the string can't be converted to a valid number." What it doesn't tell you is that if the first digit of the number passed to it is 0, it returns the number in octal. This will always happen unless you specify in the second parameter of the parseInt function the radix (or base) of the number it should return. Also, parseInt("892F77") will return 892, not NaN, since the string starts with a number. When I was doing one of the examples in the book, I ran into these problems and would never have figured them out had I not looked up the answers on the Internet. I should not have to resort to Google to answer my JavaScript questions when I have a JavaScript book right in front of me.

One last thing I should mention about this book is that you really should have a computer handy when reading it, and you need to download the files from the Murach website as described in the Appendix. I would say a third of the book is spent reviewing the code for these applications, and at the end of each chapter, there are exercises that can only be done with those downloadable applications. However, I should hope that anyone reading this book would have access to a computer and Internet, since this book is all about programming Internet applications. That being said, the applications are good. I like seeing examples of how to use my new-found knowledge. However, the most the exercises ever ask you to do is to modify the applications. I wish the book would also suggest applications to make from scratch, perhaps with downloadable solutions.

All in all, I learned a lot from this book, though I don't think it goes into enough depth, and its presentation is just plain scattered. As someone who wants to thoroughly know my way around JavaScript, I feel like I didn't get what I was looking for. I certainly don't feel like I reached an "expert level" as the book said I would. I want to know the ins and outs of every function so I don't find myself scratching my head over an error and scouring the sands of Google for the answer (curse you, parseInt!). But at the same time, if I had been a new programmer I would have been overwhelmed for the first six chapters or so. So I really can only recommend this book for people who have some programming experience and want to learn JavaScript, but don't care about all the details. Even for those people though, the order of presentation is really wacky.