Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Dynamic HTML in a Week

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book is out of date and the author is pretty unsure if the code will work for IE 4. The author uses IE 4 beta to test the code. Also, I bought this book to learn about moving objects, this book does a poor job in explaining how to create animation with DHTML.

The book is not well organized, poorly written and cannot in any way be used as a reference. In many cases it does not tell you if the code will work with both browsers, in many cases it teches you old, non-standard technologies like JavaScript Style Sheets and Visual Basic Script. If you really like to figure out something yourself using book's narrow hints you might want to buy it. I actually managed to build a few sophisticated web sites partially because of reading this book.

To be fair, this book is over 3 years old. Of course it will have outdated information. At the time this was written the W3C wasn't sure which direction to go. That alone leaves lots of issues up in the air. I got this book 2 years ago and it was helpful then but I came back here looking for an updated version and did not see one. If you are new to DHTML this book will be less helpful than more recent ones.

I knew a fair bit about HTML when I bought this and I learnt a great deal more from it. A very useful introduction to DHTML, I use it as a reference book. I don't agree with the reviewers who criticise it so heavily, I think it is well worth having on your shelf. OK there are non browser-independant examples, but you will soon work out what is going to work with each browser anyway (or you should!) PS OK one or two examples failed for me, but most are fine.

I'm not for sure what the other three readers were looking for, but I found this book delivered on its promises (after all, if a 15-year programmer needs a Teach Yourself book for HTML and JavaScript, how good can he be?) There are some examples that don't work with both, which I contacted the author about, and received an adequate explanation. If you want to get your feet wet in Dynamic HTML, and don't have a lot of experience with programming and/or HTML, this is a really good book to get you started. Unassuming, friendly, and leads you right along where you need to go.

Compared with the partisan stuff out of Microsoft, and some of the highbrow reference suitable for a "C/C++ programmer of 15 years," this hits a reasonable middle ground, and works well.

I read this book with prior knowledge of dynamic HTML to see if the author could provide further insight on the topic. After completion of the text, I was left confused. My problems with the book:

1. This book is poorly organized. I realize that this is an introductory book, and some people are looking for walk through examples, but the book needs to cover the basics better.

2. The book has awful coverage of the different DHTML implementations in Netscape and Explorer. Besides acknowledgement of the differences, the author does little to explain items.

3. The examples don't work. The typical user of this book is a beginner and would not be able to debug the examples. This is terribly irresponsible behavior by the publisher. They should have verified the code beforehand.

If people are interested in learning about DHTML or other technology subjects, I'd recommend forgetting these "Learn in a week (or 21 days)" books and check out the Wrox press books.

Yes, the book is "the FIRST book that combines the philosophy and intent behind Dynamic HTML", which should be a warning. The writers were pressured to get a product to the stores before any other publishing house got their books out. The result is a book that provides very little substance for a five hundred page book.

While not coming with a CD, the publishers provide a companion website to compliment the book. That website? One file with the examples from the book, for the Mac or the PC. Yes, it is cheaper than slapping everything on a CD and jacking the price of the book up $10, but, like other "CD included!" books, there is nothing of value at the site. The reason why? The examples just don't work.

"Teach Yourself How To Code Something That Looks Like Dynamic HTML (But Really Doesn't Work) In A Week" is a good buy if the corner store is out of Duraflame logs. If you want a book that actually teaches you DHTML, look elsewhere.

I have read over half of this book and have finally come to the conclusion that it is not me. These guys don't understand what they are talking about. Much of the book is filled with confusing talk about the WWW consortium and how they might effect the HTML document object model, but little time is given to clearly explaining how things actually work. When the authors are not babbling on about vague abstract object models, they present poor examples and dig very deep about how these examples represent something useful. As a C/C++ program with 15 years experience and an experienced HTML 3.2 user, I believe I am qualified to state the this book is not for you.

Don't buy this book!!!! Says it comes with a companion website which appears to be nothing more than an advertisement for other books!! In order to use the online versions of Teach yourself Javascript and VBscrpt That are on the companion web site you have to buy the books.

The nicely laid out examples work only in Internet Explorer. The authors have no clue. This is book is a waste of time, as it doesn't address cross browser functionality of DHTML. If you're a professional stay away from this book. The irresponsible publisher should be held accountable.