Customer Reviews

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox Professional Guides)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The key to knowing about this book is the word "Professional" in the title. There are other books aimed at the complete beginner that will start off with a much simpler "Here's How" approach to get you started. This book instead starts off with the history, the basic ECMAScript standards and a discussion on the Object nature of JavaScript. It's written by a working programmer to fill the real world needs of other working programmers. It does this job very well.

Further, the book is new and up to date. JavaScript is an evolving language as the web grows to demand increasing capabilities. Some of these features that now get full chapters in this book include: XML, Client-Server communications, Web Services, interacting with Plug-Ins.

The last chapter talks about the next step in the development of JavaScript, with cautions that this material is still preliminary and subject to change.

Excellent book for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript programmer.

Many poor quality books on this topic had been published along the years, helping JavaScript into becoming the less understood programming languages of all time. It's nice to see how finally there is another JavaScript book worth reading apart from the classic titles by Goodman and Flanagan. The book is not aimed at beginners; you either have some solid JavaScript knowledge or a decent programming experience with other languages. Compared to other titles this stands out for the chapters covering modern techniques: DOM, Client-Server Communication, XML/XSLT, and Web Services. I would say it's the most current coverage of JavaScript to date. In my own opinion, only some poor editing and organisation prevent it from reaching five stars.

I have enormous problems with this dated, confused and 'gappy' book, and advise would be readers to exercise _extreme_ caution with it, particularly with the examples, a great number of which are a long, long way from currently accepted best practice.

I don't believe that "Programmer to Programmer" describes this book well. The author's confusing and patchy descriptions of language fundamentals are not useful to those readers who are highly experienced in other programming languages such as C or C++. Neither does it seem that the author has clearly identified the target reader, as I imagine that the book will bewilder some beginners too. For example, for reasons unknown the author seemed to feel the need to embark on a "fundamentals of OOP" tutorial, a subject quite inappropriate for a "programmer-to-programmer" text as it should be taken as read, and one which is in any case too large to be adequately covered in a few pages. I imagine this may merely succeed in confusing novice programmers, who really do need to consult a proper introduction elsewhere. And why on earth did the author feel that a quick descent into UML was appropriate at the start of the third chapter? Another short section is devoted to explaining bit pattern operations, a subject that is arguably best left to real textbooks on programming fundamentals for beginners. At the same time, in many, many cases discussions of basic topics that experienced programmers would expect to find are simply absent. Javascript is in many ways highly unusual as a programming language, and because of the familiar syntax, C, C++ or Java programmers may be initially led to believe that its behaviour will be close to their expectations, yet this is not the case. For this reason it is crucial for a reference text to take care to tick off these crucial language-conversion issues properly.

Returning to the code examples, I have many problems with their poor quality. A sizeable number do not conform to current "unobtrusive" best practise. I can understand why this might have been done for reasons of brevity, but that doesn't excuse the poor example this sets. There is no discussion of accessibility, which is unforgiveable. And some of examples feature outdated, broken or deprecated techniques. The discussion of hacks to bolster up browser support for addEventListener, for example. Browser-sniffing, a deprecated technique features far too much, indeed a worrying number of examples rely on it. The author of this review is nowhere near competent to comment in detail on the quality of every code example, but the poor techniques clearly visible in some have the effect of casting doubt on the whole.

Despite being published in 2005, the book is simply too old to cover the recent tidal wave of high quality libraries which are now available, and which properly deal with some of the most difficult issues in basic javascript development, issues which this book simply does not acknowledge. The book deserves criticism for being yet one more contributor to the vast amount of poor quality javascript code on the web, yet of course it has to be said that any paper book will inevitable be vulnerable to the problem of obsolescence, since javascript support in browsers is so poor currently and techniques are changing rapidly right now.

This review is unapologetically harsh, yet I am not going to say "do not buy this book" outright. Although dated and harmful for beginners, there is a lot of material in this book, and for very experienced programmers in other programming languages who are forewarned about the book's unreliability it will at least give some idea of the issues and will provide a starting point for gathering a list of topics to be researched. But many readers may be simply better off consulting the blogs of the various acknowledged javascript gurus instead. Reading Brendan Eich's own articles would be a start.

I don't get the negative reviews that are splattered around here. The positive reviews are dead on: this is a great book. It is probably the most advanced, most modern application of Javascript ever written. I'm not speaking too far out of line since I'm fairly certain that I've bought and read them all. Javascript has been viewed as a toy or a fun little scripting language but not one that serious developers use. The author takes great care in completely debunking this theory by demonstrating advanced and useful techniques that push Javascript to the edge, without forcing it to do unnatural things. It's also extremely honest and forward about Javascript's limitations. I also appreciated the complete non-biased presentation of the multiple browsers and their slightly varied approaches to implementing Javascript. Previously, advanced Javascript books (and there weren't many!) focused on IE/JScript only but now there is a legitimate force out there not using IE! I'm am anxiously waiting for his follow-up book on AJAX technologies. Both Javascript and AJAX are hardly new, but Zakas does a commendable job here bringing browser based client side scripting into the 21st century.

I teach a Jr/Sr High programming class and we use Javascript as the language and this book as the text. Students develop using OOP patterns and practice good solid design -- which Javascript allows. Not a teacher by trade, my day job is developing client technologies and user interfaces for the financial sector.

The book covers a broad range of (very practical) topics, with practical cases worked out in detail that are not only useful in themselves but also implicitly clarify techniques. For me the book also contained quite a few eye-openers, possibly because I'm relatively a beginner in this field. This also illustrates, however, that you don't need to be a professional to read this book. I cannot judge how much it brings for someone with substantially more background than I have.

This is certainly the most current survey of Javascript in quite some time. That being said this book does indeed suffer from poor (technical) editing and organisation. The second chapter meanders for 55 pages though there were fine nuggets particularly regarding Javascript technology's immediate antecedents. The third chapter is interesting for its enumeration of a number of ways to instantiate object instances. I learned something at many a turn in this book. There's even some material on AJAX.

I was in the market looking for a good book on javascript and found... a marked lack of them. Most javascript resources seem targetted towards the non-programmer - they focus on using existing snippets of code and existing libraries and incorporating them usefully. But they do not attempt to explain exactly what is happening and why it is happening - they don't give you the ability to do anything from scratch.

This book, thankfully, goes into perfect detail on everything. It tackles difficult areas like the DOM with clarity and good organization. The book progresses very logically and the writing is very clear.


It gives very broad and fairly deep coverage of the language - from the very basics to Objects and Inheritance to DOM and to client-server communications. Each section is well written, it does not condescend but is very accessible. This book, being out earlyish, modestly suggests itself as an introduction to AJAX techniques - however, I found it much more useful than other books explicitly dedicated to the technology.

Another very useful touch is his attention to cross platform issues, giving you code snippets to make things work in all (or at least most) browsers.

Overall this is an excellent book.

I really have appreciated this book. I've read the O'Reilly series, and a few other JavaScript books, and I have to say - this one is clear, has useful examples, and outlines the why and how very well. Sometimes the story gets a little complex - for example, the author describes how to use Object.prototypes by explaining the history of their use - which gets progressively more convoluted before it gets simple again). This isn't probably very good teaching technique, but I really appreciated learning how people view and hack JS to get what they need.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone thinking of doing serious browser Javascript.

JavaScript has progressed from a nice little scripting language for some neat effects to a widely used programming language that is used in internal and external web applications. Not that it happened over night, but it eventually did happen and knowing and learning JavaScript is a desired skill in the web community.

This book by Nicholas Zakas goes language concepts such as ECMAScript basics, using objects, inheritance, the DOM, regular expressions and events. Basically everything you need to know about JavaScript to get a good handle on practical implementation such as form validation, browser detection, image roll-overs, sorting tables, drag and drop, error handling and XML handling, and flash embedding. This is a very complete book on almost every topic you can think of when dealing with JavaScript and current uses.

Chapter 1 - JavaScript History
Chapter 2 - ECMAScript Basics - Variables, Reference types, Operators, Statements, and Functions. ECMAScript - The core language JavaScript is based on.
Chapter 3 - Object basics - Working with objects, Creating objects, and Practical examples
Chapter 4 - Inheritance - Foundation of an object oriented language
Chapter 5 - Using JavaScript in the browser; basic JavaScript objects: window, document, location, navigator, screen
Chapter 6 - DOM basics
Chapter 7 - Regular expressions - Simple and complex patterns, understanding the RegExp object
Chapter 8 - Browser and Object detection
Chapter 9 - Events - Event flow, listeners, types of events, and cross browser events
Chapter 10 - Advanced DOM techniques
Chapter 11 - Forms and Data Integrity
Chapter 12 - Sorting tables
Chapter 13 - Drag and Drop - Learn how to simulate Ajax techniques
Chapter 14 - Error Handling - Try/Catch/Finally
Chapter 15 - XML in JavaScript - XPath, XSLT and support in browsers
Chapter 16 - Client-Server Communications - Cookies, HTTP requests, hidden frames, GET/POST differences
Chapter 17 - Web Services - SOAP, WSDL, practical examples
Chapter 18 - Interacting with Plugins - Embedding ActiveX, Flash, Applets and plugin detection
Chapter 19 - Deployment issues - Security and international concerns
Chapter 20 - Future of JavaScript

I've never seen a more complete book on JavaScript to date. If you are new to JavaScript or need a great reference or need to learn some advanced techniques (DOM, drag and drop, XML, web services) this is the book for you.

Ok, I'm not so good at it, but I'll try my best.

The book explains since the remotest creation of JavaScript language, until the most powerful features available only in the most recent browsers.

Starting with ScriptEase, walking though LiveScript until the lastest JavaScript implementations (DOM, BOM, ECMAScript), the book provides a extremely didatic way to begin a very deep study of the resources of this wondrful language, specifying the basics of ECMAScript (on chapter 2- explaining the syntax, types and primitive valus, etc), passing though more elaborate techniques, evolving Object Oriented Programming, its usage, already existent classes (chapter 3), Inheritance (chapter 4). Then it starts to detail BOM (Browser Object Model) and the basic objects.

While detailing Document Object Model (DOM) - chapter 6 -, provides a quickly explanation about nodes hierarchy and XML.

Invading the Authomata Theory and Formal Languages, explains Regular Expressions on chapter 7 and how to use them in JavaScript.

On chapter 8, you have a brief of the Know-How part on chapter 11, 12 and 13, when Nicholas explains: Forms, Tables Ordening and Drag-and-Drop. That chapter (8), explains how to structure an efficient browsers check, covering more than 99% of usually used browsers.

Talking about a book to professionals, nothing more defeated than events manipulation and exceptions handling, that are covered inside book on chapter 9 and 14. DOM manipulations are detailed on chapter 10, approaching deeply the subject Ranges, both in IE and DOM perspective.

Something that could not be missed in a good JavaScript book, form manipulations are discussed on chapter 11.

Starting the Know-How section already mentioned, the chapter 12 comes with intention to simplify one enigma for most programmers, the Table Sorting.

The chapter 13 desmistify the traditional "drag-and-drop". On chapter 14, exceptions handling is presence with a dense approaching of this topic.

Since 1998 (W3C Recommendation), XML came as a way to struture data in an efficient form and since it, it's intensily used on Software Industries. Nicholas covers with perspicacity the whole XML-JavaScript interaction on chapter 15. Loader, error checking, on IE and Mozilla are discussed. Support of XSLT and xPath are also provided in the book.

JavaScript is a language that runs on client-side; so, it's not possible to communicate with Databases or also handle files on server. These itens are left to languages called server-side, like: PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, CF, ... Professional JavaScript for Web Developers provides a whole chapter dealing with interaction ways between these two types of languages. In this chapter (16), Nicholas describes how to deal with HTTP requests, like GET e POST. The top resource running though Internet, AJAX is discussed shortly on this chapter.

A BIG-BANG have been done to Web Services. Just a few people knows what is it and how does it work. Nicholas dedicated a whole chapter to explain about this recent subject and so commented.

Actually, technologies like Java Applets and Flash animations are used to make content more dinamic and to increment the site-user interaction. Resources like these need plugins installed on browser. On chapter 18, it's approached this interaction of JavaScript and plugins.

Before the last book chapter, security techniques, internacionalization and optimizations are approached.

Finishing the book with golden key, the book covers the future of the language, I mean, the ways that it could probably follow.



As a reviewer, and a massive book reader, I can say that Nicholas' book is the best one I've notice about JavaScript for intermediate to advanced programmers. It's an honor to be part of such a good coverage book Professional JavaScript for Web Developer has. Nicholas made his daily lessons very good and probe us that his didactic and skills are perfect.
Now, if anyone asks me for an excellent JavaScript book, they'll listen: Professional JavaScript for Web Developer, by Nicholas C. Zackas.