Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja [Paperback]

John Resig (Author), Bear Bibeault (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 28, 2012

Summary

Secrets of the Javascript Ninja takes you on a journey towards mastering modern JavaScript development in three phases: design, construction, and maintenance. Written for JavaScript developers with intermediate-level skills, this book will give you the knowledge you need to create a cross-browser JavaScript library from the ground up.

About this Book

You can't always attack software head-on. Sometimes you come at it sideways or sneak up from behind. You need to master an arsenal of tools and know every stealthy trick. You have to be a ninja.

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja leads you down the pathway to JavaScript enlightenment. This unique book starts with key concepts, like the relationships between functions, objects, and closures, taught from the master's perspective. You'll grow from apprentice to ninja as you soak up fresh insights on the techniques you use every day and discover features and capabilities you never knew about. When you reach the final chapters, you'll be ready to code brilliant JavaScript applications and maybe even write your own libraries and frameworks.

You don't have to be a ninja to read this book—just be willing to become one. Are you ready?

Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

What's Inside

• Functions, objects, closures, regular expressions, and more
• Seeing applications and libraries from the right perspective
• Dealing with the complexities of cross-browser development
• Modern JavaScript design

About the Authors

John Resig is an acknowledged JavaScript authority and the creator of the jQuery library. Bear Bibeault is a web developer and coauthor of Ajax in Practice, Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action, and jQuery in Action from Manning.

Table of Contents

PART 1 PREPARING FOR TRAINING

1. Enter the ninja
2. Arming with testing and debugging

PART 2 APPRENTICE TRAINING

3. Functions are fundamental
4. Wielding functions
5. Closing in on closures
6. Object-orientation with prototypes
7. Wrangling regular expressions
8. Taming threads and timers

PART 3 NINJA TRAINING

9. Ninja alchemy: runtime code evaluation
10. With statements
11. Developing cross-browser strategies
12. Cutting through attributes, properties, and CSS

PART 4 MASTER TRAINING

13. Surviving events
14. Manipulating the DOM
15. CSS selector engines

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bear Bibeault has been working in the area of web applications since the mid-nineties, getting started with beta versions of JSP and Servlets. He is a senior moderator at the popular JavaRanch site, and has contributed articles to the JavaRanch Journal as well as Dr Dobb's Journal online. He is a co-author of several Manning books including Ajax in Practice, Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action, jQuery in Action, and jQuery in Action, Second Edition. He works and resides in Austin, Texas.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; Pap/Psc edition (December 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193398869X
• ISBN-13: 978-1933988696
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Java
  • #4 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Object-Oriented Design
  • #5 in Books > Computers & Technology > Web Development & Design > Programming > JavaScript

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Something to Recommend Other Than "The Good Parts" Every !@#$ing Time Book Recs are Asked For February 25, 2013

By Erik H. Reppen

Format:Paperback

Resig's earlier effort "Pro JavaScript Techniques" was a good read for its time but got spread thin by getting engrossed in the details of normalizing the DOM API which is something I already had quirksmode.org for as my go-to and that subject is now increasingly less complicated the closer you get to ditching IE8 support.

This is in my experience, the first book to really properly focus on all of the stuff that comes together to really make JavaScript unique and powerful as a language, which has in the past been an understanding you could really only come to by tinkering with JS and reading/borrowing from generous web contributions from Resig, (maybe) Crockford, and IMO, JS-superstar whose name is not sung enough (not for a lack of trying by Resig among others) Dean Edwards whose background in Scheme helped him help the rest of us understand JS for the true complexity-reducing and normalizing beast that it is.

JS didn't come out on top as the only client-side browser option worth pursuing by accident and the view-point that we're "stuck" with it is one that should hopefully be hastily remedied by reading about and understanding what a marvel JS really is when you stop blaming it for Microsoft's tomfoolery and get over the fact that Eich wrote the original version in ten days. That was 17 years ago. JS has evolved constantly since then and hasn't spread to the server, OS, and become the ultimate pan-mobile solution by accident either.

My general sense of the writing is that Resig as always is good at distilling the seemingly complex into bite sized pieces while Bear makes them go down much more easily.

On the "how to use this book" front I'd say keep browsing skimming David Flanagan's "Definitive Guide" to see what all your ingredients are but read this if you're interested in becoming a master chef. If you're intermediate level at JS or heavily experienced in another language to the point where you can compare its mechanics to other languages, this book's probably a good fit.

My only real gripe is (I assume) Resig's with-whiches, from-whiches and in-whiches, which I find semi-painful to read but this is a very minor thing.

Oh and it also took 'em long enough.

:P

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for any js coder January 24, 2013

By Smertrios

Format:Paperback

This book is a must-have for any serious js coder. It's almost guaranteed that you'll learn new tricks from this book. But more importantly your knowledge of the language will dramatically expand.

Bringing in a 'traditional' c/c++ background, js has been a 'pain' for me to deal with. I've been reading a few js books, tons of blogs and tuts, but very few expose the true nature of the language in a simple and pragmatic manner (way too many contrived examples out there, leading to greater confusion.) The kind of knowledge that keeps you from aiming at your foot... This book is it! I've been reading some of the chapters over and over to gain a deeper understanding of js. I then reviewed some of my previous code and realized that... shoot! I was gonna be limping soon.

Packed with information with an easy-read style, this book is already becoming a 'classic' for me. While not for beginners, if you're a programmer and learning js, I'd recommend you go through this book as you go. Most other js books focus on the syntax and usage but not so much on the language intricacies. For one, I tend to learn a language better if I also understand how it works.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for becoming a javascript guru February 4, 2013

By Gary Bisaga VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I know I'm mixing my ethnic metaphors, but this book will help you get to ninjahood, guruhood, or whatever other hood you desire to attain. I am not an inexperienced coder: I have 30 years of experience in coding, including 17 years of java and probably 5 doing semi-serious JavaScript. Still, this book opened my eyes to so many things about JavaScript. For example: I knew about functions and I knew about closures, but the exact relationship between functions, objects, and closures had always eluded me. Knowing what you are doing when you say "new Function()". So many other things.

Face it: most of us look at JavaScript as a toy language. But that is only because most of the scripts we've seen have been toy scripts. We've never really seen the guts of a serious JavaScript library like jQuery, require.js, or impactJS. Once you do, you start seeing constructs you can hardly fathom coming from a background in conventional programming languages like java. JavaScript is a serious programming language, and one that is deceptively similar in syntax to java, even though it could hardly be further in semantics. Add to that the fact that there are libraries that make JavaScript look object-oriented, you can easily transport your object-oriented lines of thought into your JavaScript programming.

This book really gives you the ins and outs of JavaScript. Within a few pages I was either learning things I had never known about the language, or realizing how things I had seen actually work. What's more, it presents it in a "unit test" environment. I had always doubted how testable JavaScript was, and I must not be alone, because the book starts out talking about unit tests and presents many of the features using a unit test environment to show how they really work. I consider anything that gets us to write more automated tests - and I am as guilty as any - a good thing.

I highly recommend this book.