Customer Reviews

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is currently my favorite book on JavaScript.

Zakas doesn't pull any punches. It took me a while to work through some of the chapters, primarily Chapter 5 (Reference Types), Chapter 6 (Object-Oriented Programming) and Chapter 18 (Advanced Techniques) because of the difficulty of the material. This is a good thing: the difficulty is due to the sometimes non-intuituve aspects of JavaScript (i.e., function binding and currying), not to any possible failure on the part of the author. His command of his material is evident in his ability to explain these difficult techniques, which can seem overwhelming at first blush. I really like that he doesn't insult his reader's intelligence by sticking with the easier-to-understand aspects of JavaScript but covers the most advanced JavaScript topics thoroughly. I expect to be challenged when reading a book on JavaScript, and taking time to work through the examples by stepping through them in Firebug is well worth it and what I look forward to doing. I don't like when I can read a book and not have to touch a keyboard to understand the material.

I especially love the chapter on OO programming and how he breaks down each OO pattern. He starts with the most basic example of inheritance and works up to the best-case scenario, always giving the pros and cons of each pattern along the way and when each pattern could be employed. In doing so, he provides an invaluable service to those who want to understand how libraries are engineered. I remember when I first was looking at the source code for a particular library, and I was completely baffled by what I saw. For example, I would often see this:

MyClass.superclass.constructor.call(this);

There was no explanation to what this esoteric statement was doing. Now, after reading the book (actually, at the time it was the first edition of the book), I understand that this is known as constructor stealing or object masquerading, and I now know that it's used to inherit instance properties. I had many, many moments like this, and now when I look at source code I can intelligently follow it and understand its intent.

This book empowers the reader with new knowledge. This is especially important when more and more I encounter front-enders who feel that knowing jQuery is knowing JavaScript. I remember when I first began looking at JavaScript libraries I was completely overwhelmed; from that moment I resolved to learn the JavaScript language inside and out if I could. Then, I'd go back to the libraries. Well, that has paid off in spades now, and I feel completely comfortable working in any library knowing what they're doing under the hood (and I have worked with several at different jobs). In fact, I write my own library in my spare time, and I never could have begun to do that or understand how to do that without books like this one and others.

I also love how Zakas gives the back-history to all the subjects he covers. Knowing where stuff came from is important, even if I would never use it. For example, I never knew there were HTML methods, and if I were to have come across them in the legacy code that I support I would've thought that they were user-defined methods. Now I know better. Knowledge is power.

I work on a team composed of Java developers, and this book has helped me to better communicate with them. I love how Zakas talked about how the Array methods can act as data structures. That's very important for a book to cover. Giving comparisons to other languages and emphasizing the similarities and how one language can translate to another is another way that this book has empowered me. It's much easier for me now to convey ideas to my teammates when I can express things like, "JavaScript doesn't have block-level scope like you're used to, but that's what anonymous functions are doing and that's why you see them here...", etc.

Lastly, the expanded chapter on Best Practices is invaluable. I've already employed them in my own work and have gotten the wheels in motion to do what I can at work (gzipping and including compression in our build process).

If you're left a little or a lot puzzled about prototypal inheritance, closures and OO programming in general, get a copy of this book and devote time to it. You'll walk away completely confident that there isn't anything out there that you can't figure out, as I did.

P.S. I suggest reading this book cover-to-cover, even if you feel like that doesn't apply to you. Zakas is very thorough in disseminating lesser-known aspects of both core and client-side JavaScript. In fact, there's so much that I'm going back for a second-helping.

While I was reading this, I liked to imagine that I was at university and that Douglas Crockford was the insanely popular genius professor that showed up late for lectures, and then either spoke too fast or else mumbled a lot, and then locked himself in his office refusing to answer the door during office hours while he worked on his Next Big Thing that would make everyone oooh and aaah and validate his brilliance. Meanwhile, in that same imaginary university, Nicholas Zakas was the graduate student that served as the TA to that class--and he happened to be equally brilliant and super-accessible and willing to take the time out to explain it all in a way that was thorough and comprehensible.

So that being said, if you consider yourself or would like to consider yourself a professional front-end engineer for web applications (or in any way want to become a JavaScript expert), I cannot recommend this book enough. On the one hand, you have Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts--which does a great job of eviscerating JavaScript while at the same time extracting its (well...) its Good Parts--but it's like someone ran the text through a minification utility and made it tokenized and super-dense and stripped out all the comments. And on the other hand, you have Zakas' Professional JavaScript for Web Developers which one might describe as <em>The Good Parts (the long version)</em>.

What Zakas gives us--while assuming that you are already doing some professional JavaScript web development--is a good overview of JavaScript/ECMAScript, with special care given to make the text practical. This is not strictly an academic exercise; he is careful to make sure that each example applies to real world scenarios (<em>i.e.</em>, web apps running in a browser) and that you are able to take away something useful and meaningful from the text's discussion. In other words, he provides a road map for how to make the most of JavaScript as a language (...since, as a front-end engineer on the web, you're stuck with it.) and how to make it work in all the convoluted, counter-intuitive situations that you are basically guaranteed to encounter (Even if you don't expect to ever work with XML. Even if you do think that the JavaScript 2 and ECMAScript 4 stuff is a little too future-forward/in-the-weeds type stuff.).

In a nutshell, if you are doing professional web development on the front end, this book needs to be on your desk. I can't wait to check out his next book...

I bought this wonderful book a short while ago, just after the 2nd edition was released. Although I haven't finished it (over halfway through), the author's writing style makes understanding JavaScript easier. I have bought many other books on JavaScript but most follow the copy-and-paste code tutorial style which can be completely confusing for the complete JavaScript beginner such as myself. This book offers simple explanations using concepts that illuminate, rather than befuddle, the nuances and idiosyncrasies inherent in JavaScript. While there are many JavaScript books out there, the roads they follow lead to being just another bookshelf dust collector; this book breaks new trails into expanding your JavaScript skill, actually guiding you on to the golden path to Internet rockstardom!

**Note: This review is for the 2nd edition 2009 version**

This book is awesome. I had read previously read "Simply JavaScript" by Kevin Yank of [...]. That book is fine if you want to slap something into a website, clog up the browser's memory, and never write re-usable code. After that book (and many online tutorials) I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me because C++ was easier than JavaScript. Mr. Zakas goes in depth with JavaScript. I am so glad he wrote this book. I was riping my hair out of my head trying to understand this strange language. He covers everything from data types, functions, inline functions, references, arrays (which act like vectors and stacks, etc...), dom 1, 2, 3, event listeners, ajax, json, xml, animations, and the new future standards.

If you know C++ and JAVA it will be easier to understand the language. But generally speaking, if you know how to program you will do just fine. Just remember OOP in JavaScript is different. He explains the different methods since JavaScript isn't a OOP based languaged it's a prototype based language.

I read the 1 star reviews from the 1st edition. Don't be fooled by those reviews, the new version is king. If you really want to code JavaScript and master it, this book will be your bible.

I bought this book the day after I attended a session given by Nicholas Zakas (author) at the Velocity Conference in San Jose this year. He offered some brilliant pointers and techniques on writing Javascript code that performs well and is efficient and stable on all browsers.

The book covers all aspects of Javascript in detail and approaches all subjects with an object-oriented mindset. From language basics (data types, variables, objects, functions) and event handling to the Document Object Model (DOM) and the Browser Object Model (BOM) to error handling and debugging to advanced features (custom events, drag and drop) and offline storage just to name a few. He also talks about AJAX, JSON vs. XML and HTML 5 and the new APIs it's bringing. There is also a brief history of language that is written in a much more informative way that in any other book I've read on the subject.

The book puts a lot of emphasis on performance and efficiency, especially when it comes to scope, memory management and algorithm complexity. You will finally learn and understand what closures are all about. You will know how some statements work in some browsers (IE is always the slowest browser.) You will learn a ton of stuff you won't find anywhere else neither online nor in a book.

There is also a section on best practices including maintainability, performance and deployment that I found especially useful.

If you are not a programmer AND just starting to learn Javascript, get Learning JavaScript, 2nd Edition. Otherwise, this is your book. It is essential in any respectable front-end developer's library.

This is the only book you will need to master javascript if you know some programming.

This one will take care of all the beginner-intermediate-advanced javascript programmer needs if you are not completely new to the concept of OOP.

Javascript used to scare me till now as I had not understood it well due to lack of well written books (complete references make me even more confused so I am not counting them here).

I tried learning javascript by looking at other peoples' code at my work place and on the net but the spaghetti nature of most of them scared me away.

In short the best book around.

Sachin

For the most part this is an excellent book, the simplicity and clarity of the examples given is mostly excellent, and the coverage feels complete. This book is definitely for experienced JavaScript programmers, and probably other programmers from a similar syntactical based language that will be able to grasp the concepts quickly. Although it does begin with the basics, more as an overview/reminder, it doesn't continue along those lines as you move through the book, for example when covering regular expressions it doesn't tell you why regular expression literals begin and end with a forward slash as you should already know that, equally it doesn't waste time explaining the parts that make up a regular expression, such as repetition characters, position characters etc, as you should already know that too, instead it heads straight into advanced stuff, and this is the case on most topics. The terminology used throughout is definitely aimed at experienced programmers that will instantly understand the commentary; beginners will be baffled as programming terms aren't explained, unless it is specific to JavaScript.

Constructor, prototype, inheritance and many other patterns are discussed with great clarity. Equally the DOM and BOM are very well covered with the many differences amongst the browsers explained with cross browser solutions provided. Events are also given excellent coverage. The theory behind each aspect of JavaScript is often provided, I've always felt such theory is absolutely necessary in order to really get to grips with a language, and this sort of stuff is lacking in many other books, but not here thankfully. You'll walk away not only knowing how to do something and why you should do it that way, but also how it works under the hood.

There are issues (as opposed to downsides), one is that some aspects of the book, especially early on, feel more like you're reading a reference book rather than a tutorial and it does make reading those sections a little difficult from a concentration/interest standpoint due to the dry nature of reference type material. Having said that though it's obvious that completeness was the aim of this book as there is just so much stuff in here, much of it you'll likely never encounter in your working day, although it does leave one feeling somewhat overwhelmed at times. Another potential issue, to those that have no OO programming experience, is that comparisons with JavaScript and OO type features of other languages are made throughout, and again the terminology is applied without explanations, so if you have no OO experience or knowledge you may find parts of the book difficult to understand, clearly the author was trying to anticipate the questions of experienced OO programmers moving over to JavaScript. I call these issues rather than downsides as this is a professional book, in the right target market these issues shouldn't really be a problem.

The area which needs improvement is real-world application of advanced concepts. It's one thing understanding patterns and advanced techniques but knowing when to apply them in a meaningful context is frequently, but not always, lacking. In addition the author will teach a particular concept and then wrap it up in his own utility classes and then throughout the book he'll simply use his utility classes when he needs that particular feature, now this is no doubt the way to do things but whilst I'm learning I would prefer he'd reuse the actual features directly in order to help cement concepts in my mind that I'd previously covered as I go through the book, unfortunately the use of utility classes hides away the concepts you've previously learnt so you have to go back and review. In my view it would have been better if he left his utility classes to the best practices chapter towards the end of the book. On the plus side the author does support the book on the p2p forums and he was extremely helpful and quick to respond when I had questions.

One final note about this book is that it is slightly dated now, for example ECMAScript 4 is referred to in this book as the next standard but this has actually been abandoned for ECMAScript 5, and under EC5 some features have been deprecated in strict mode, such as arguments.callee amongst others, but don't let that put you off as EC5 lacks browser support. For me this book really hits the mark, especially with advanced JavaScript techniques, although I'm going to have to get in lots of practice before I forget it all!

Probably the most complete and updated book that you may find about Javascript.

The author made a great job writting about some of the most important topics on javascript development and highlighting the difference among browsers.

Most of the topics are already covered in other javascript books I have read before, but not in the way Nicholas does, he usually goes deeper on every topic.

If you have some knowledge on javascript and want to reach another level, this is the book for you. If you consider yourself a guru, you may enjoy it as well, but definitely, not for newbies.

I am conversant in other compiled and scripted languages so learning one more (javascript) was not difficult for me. I liked the detailed description of what works and what does not work on each important browser in the market. I would have liked more text on the subject of objects and debugging objects in javascript for they are a different kind of species than in other languages. This to me is a little tough subject for a beginner.

I also appreciate the complete examples that a reader can download from the web and run as is. I would have liked the full examples to be listed in the book but it might have bloated the pages a lot more - I don't know.

On the whole a good book every person reading up on javascript should have.

I'm new to Javascript development and this book helped me out right away. It covers many useful techniques with just the right mix of information and code examples. It appears to cover many features so it may be good for intermediate developers too. It also describes differences between browsers and shows how to code to handle the differences.