|
|
|
Average Customer Review
Share your thoughts with other customers
|
|
|
The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
For Intermediate and Advanced Programmers
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...
Published on May 16, 2005 by John Matlock
|
› See more 5 star, 4 star reviews |
 |
36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
Handle with extreme care
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...
Published on July 16, 2007 by Cecil Ward
|
› See more 3 star, 2 star, 1 star reviews |
|
|
37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
For Intermediate and Advanced Programmers, May 16, 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
The most current coverage of JavaScript to date, June 6, 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
Handle with extreme care, July 16, 2007
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Take your skills to the next level, August 2, 2009
This review is from: Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Terrific book on modern, multi-browser Javascript, November 2, 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Also for semi-beginners, August 30, 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Best Contemporary Coverage of an Underrated language, May 9, 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent in depth coverage, March 28, 2006
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
should be sub-titled "JavaScript: The Good Parts (the long version)", February 5, 2010
This review is from: Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
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...
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
The only javascript book that you need to succeed!,, October 2, 2009
This review is from: Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
**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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
