Customer Reviews

Object-Oriented JavaScript: Create scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is very well written and contains a lot of great information, but if you're looking to learn how "Create scalable, reusable high-quality javascript applications and libraries", it is nearly useless. There were a total of two chapters that I found useful to a non-novice. One covered inheritance options in incredible details (which is great, since there are so many), and the last chapter gives lip service to covering common OO patterns with javascript. That's about it. "Introduction to creating objects and simple OO patterns in Javascript" would have been a much more apt title.

Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov is a first among JavaScript books in my opinion. OOP in JavaScript is not new, but has gained much popularity since the use of JavaScript in Ajax and the development of JavaScript libraries and widgets from various web companies (especially Yahoo!). Learning how to create component-based applications using JavaScript is not an easy thing to master if all you know about JavaScript is doing "mouse-overs" or neat little effects. There really isn't a book out there that really explains how OOP works in JavaScript completely.

There are books from Apress and WROX that are geared towards "intermediate" topics in JavaScript such as creating objects and so forth, but they quickly go into sing custom libraries which really doesn't teach you anything apart from using a library.

This book really goes into detail in explaining how the syntax of JavaScript can be used to create scalable applications from the ground-up. I would say this book is geared for the developer who has a grasp on the language itself but wants to learn more in creating real useful applications for the web using JavaScript and wants to learn without depending on any pre-built library or component.

The author goes into the basics of the language first (chapter 1-2) then spends a chapter on functions (chapter 3) which is the many ways in JavaScript to create objects. Since JavaScript is not a fully OO language, it can get confusing on understanding the many different ways to create an object. Stoyan explains it very well with many examples so anybody can understand it.

The next few chapters (4 - 6), the author goes into OOP practices like how objects work, the Prototype built-in object, inheritance, and many of the built-in methods and properties you can use to manipulate your custom objects. Yes, object literal notation is covered in-depth since it really is the standard way in JavaScript to create objects.

The rest of the book has some excellent chapters on the BOM, DOM, Ajax and Design Patterns which really round out the book and make it worth it. I have never seen a book so complete on some of the more intermediate to advanced features of JavaScript and explaining it so anybody can learn it.

Go get yourself a copy of this book today!

This is a well written book, I recommend that everyone wanting to get into javascript programming go pick up this book. I first bought JavaScript: The Definitive guide by Oreily because everyone in the JavaScript community said thats the most detailed book on javascript. But that book was like reading a dictionary and I would get bored with it pretty quick. This book "Object-Oriented Javascript" is a wonderful read, its well structured. Flowing from 1 chapter to another giving you everything you need to know like building blocks laying out a strong foundation.

Before I read this book I wasnt comfortable with javascript at all, but now I feel like I can do just about anything with it. I really liked the chapters on Prototyping and the section on closures work. The author really tries hard to show how javascript works by not only explaining it in laymen terms but also having diagrams to help illustrate his point. The examples are kept short and to the point and he has many examples to help get all his points across.

The way this book is layed out it will make for a good desktop reference.

Stoyan Stefanov, I'm looking forward to any more books you might come out with.

(Disclaimer: this is a summary of a more lengthy review I posted at http://www.bramstein.com/articles/object-oriented-javascript.html)

The book starts with a good introduction to the various aspects of JavaScript, from data types and control structures in Chapter 2 to functions and objects in Chapter 3 and 4. The writing in these chapters is clear and contains plenty of examples you can follow along. Although these chapters provide a good introduction to basic JavaScript, you could find the same information in most other JavaScript books (JavaScript: The Definitive Guide comes to mind.)

The interesting stuff however starts in Chapter 5 and 6 with an in-depth discussion of JavaScript's prototype based nature and the various forms of inheritance it supports. These chapters provide one of the clearest introductions to prototype based programming I have yet seen. If you're already familiar with basic JavaScript but unsure about your knowledge of prototypes and inheritance, this would be a good place to start reading. This book shows that there are better and simpler alternatives to classical inheritance available in prototype based languages (and if you really want to use classical inheritance it will show you how to do that as well.)

Chapter 8 "Coding and Design Patterns" is in my opinion the most interesting chapter. It introduces various coding and design patterns such as initialization time branching and configuration objects, as well as JavaScript implementations of patterns from the famous Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) book. My only negative point on this chapter is that I found it too short---I would have liked to see more patterns and perhaps even style guidelines.

In conclusion; I found it to be a very good book, and highly recommend it if you are looking for a good introduction to JavaScript or to upgrade your skills to "modern JavaScript".

Having read a large number of JavaScript books, I would say that this is easily one of the best around. The introductory chapters are above average, and thoughtfully mention a number of useful details. The core chapters in the book describe Functions, Objects, Prototype, and Inheritance. These chapters alone are worth the price of the book. They are probably clearer than any other book on the subject.

Beginners and moderate JavaScript users will gain a great deal from this book, and advanced users will also find it useful. Highly recommended.

This is a keeper on my bookshelf. I am not new to JavaScript but routine for me includes finding better or books that look at things from different perspectives. This book is sort of a handbook with short cut concepts explaining how JavaScript thinks from one end of the language to the other. It also shows several different takes and methods for achieving concepts. To date this is the best book I have seen explaining 'closures'. On an issue of style my love of OO programming is more 'class' oriented. So this book approached things slightly different from what I was expecting. With that said there was no regret for reading this book. It will solve other programming needs and will be one of the routine books to come off my shelf again and again for sure!
(FYI... by way of reference I am the author of ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial )

I liked that book covers exactly the JavaScript LANGUAGE, not libraries, not effects, but the LANGUAGE. Highly advise!

I'm not new to OO JavaScript and employ many of the techniques explained in this book on a daily basis, but that didn't stop me from learning many new things and filling in the gaps and cementing my knowledge in most areas.

Stoyan's ability to walk the reader through a complex topic and exaplin the complexities in an easy to understand manner, will help JS developers of all abilities.

This really is a must have book.

This is the first review I've ever written on Amazon. After reading this book and seeing how anyone could give it less than 4 stars, I felt compelled to write something. Before reading Object-Oriented JavaScript, never in my life have I read a programming book from cover to cover with such a clear understanding of everything that's going on. I finished the entire book and its examples in less than 5 days, and I absolutely HATE reading books, let alone books about programming.

The author gives amazingly clear and concise examples and explanations of the nuances of the JavaScript language that I've been waiting to understand for years. No page-long routines gone over line by line in the text following the routine, forcing you to flip back and forth to remember what the heck the autor is referring to. Almost every single example, including examples for some of the most confusing concepts to grasp about JavaScript, are gracefully done in ten lines or less almost 100% of the time.

The exercises are challenging but not impossible, and really help you understand the concepts you've just learned. It's extremely rewarding to see the light go off in your head while you crank out code that you wouldn't have been able to read yourself just a few days ago.

I always put off JavaScript and never truly understood why some people loved it so much until I started to realize that it's basically going to become the universal standard for web programming within the next 5 years or so, as more and more applications move from being primarily server driven to browser driven. The thought of having to learn JS scared the daylights out me, because I never really even remotely understood it before. It just seemed to be so different than anything else I was used to, and completely unstructured, without any kind of rules or laws governing what's going on. This book proves my thinking wrong, and it's literally the most important programming book I've ever had.

To anyone complaining that it comes short on its promise of creating "scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries," you obviously misread the title. It's called "Object-Oriented Javascript" for a reason...because that's the whole goal of the book. The idea is to give you the tools to be able to create those "scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries," not to create them for you.

This book is a "must-have" for any web developer interested in getting into the JS game. If you have a short attention span such as myself, and reading programming books is normally a chore or almost impossible, the concise examples and clear explanations make this book almost tailor-made for you.

I found the online Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) "JavaScript Guide" and "JavaScript Reference" to be a more concise and thorough teaching of the JavaScript language. The MDN docs have higher-quality and many more charts/graphs/tables. The code examples are also more meaningful and relevant. Moreover, the MDN docs have coverage on iterators and generators, XML processing with E4X, and a modern look the prototypical object model.

"Chapter 6: Inheritance" is very extensive, covering 12 techniques of achieving differing levels of inheritance. The author makes numerous references to Douglas Crockford's early-day methods of classical inheritance. The problem is Crockford himself states, "I now see my early attempts to support the classical model in JavaScript as a mistake." I feel the author's promotion of the classical approach diminishes the power of JavaScript as a functional/prototype-based language. Besides, most of these inheritance implementations are moot with JavaScript's new native function: Object.create.

"Chapter 8: Coding and Design Patterns" is the only chapter that goes beyond the beginner level. This is also the only chapter of the book that is not directly covered in the MDN documentation. However, this chapter is only 25 pages; barely an overview of such intermediate topics. For an in-depth look at design patterns, I would highly recommend Pro JavaScript Design Patterns (Recipes: a Problem-Solution Ap).

The best parts of the book are the "coding patterns" in chapter 8:
- separation of content, presentation, behavior
- namespaces
- init-time branching
- lazy definition
- configuration objects
- self-executing functions

Finally, at no point did the author construct a code example demonstrating application or library development, not to mention scalability. All code examples were self-contained snippets. Because of the subtitle, I was anticipating an intermediate to advanced teaching of JavaScript, which it clearly is not.