Customer Rating:  
Summary: examples don't work
Comment: I tried to do the autoscroll example from chapter three. I started with the samples I downloaded and unzipped from the O'Reilly site. The first thing I noticed was that the picture in the samples was different from the picture in the book (no bother there), but then I noticed the picture was not really big enough to fill up the full width of the page, much less be big enough to scroll.
I went to a site which had panoramas so I could find a picture big enough for the exercise, and finished writing the page. But when I tried it out, the script didn't work at all. Not being an expert, I assumed that I had done the exercise incorrectly, but when I tried the example downloaded from the O'Reilly website-- it didn't work either!!!
Also, I noticed the code example in the book did not match the sample document from the downloaded .zip file.
You would think they would have the bugs worked out by now: it IS, after all, the Second Edition!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good resource on DOM, DHTML, and java script
Comment: If you are looking for a book to cover DHTML, DOM, and java scripting with a view to enhance your web sites, this is an excellent book.
I have developed many corporate ASP.NET web sites, and did not rely on java scripting for anything. (Yes ASP.NET pages do generate some java scripts).
I found this book a great stepping off point to learn CSS, DHTML, DOM, and using java scripts to enhance my web sites.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good book for getting up to speed quickly...
Comment: In some of my other reviews, I've talked about how you need a mixture of "how to" and reference books. This book falls into the "how to" realm, as this is a volume you can use if you're just starting out with JavaScript. Don't let the small size fool you, however. There's a lot of really good information packed into a book of manageable size.The book is made up of a series of code samples that illustrate a particular task or function you'd want to accomplish in a web page. For instance, in the Forms And Validation chapter, the authors discuss why you would want to use JavaScript to do form validation. They then start out with a simple script to show how you'd set up a validation script for a form. After that, they start to build out the different validation edits that should catch invalid data. At the end, they recap with the complete script they just walked you through. The advantage to this style is that you are learning by doing real-world examples. And when finished, you have examples of code that you can refer back to in the future when you need similar functionality. Another important thing to understand about JavaScript is how to use it to work with the object model of the browser, such as windows, forms, images, etc. Much of this information is interspersed within the chapters that are teaching you how to do things with JavaScript. I would have liked to see a chapter devoted just to the browser object model. However, given the intended audience (beginning web developers), it could have been a little too confusing to break that out. For Notes/Domino developers, you'll find a lot that will be immediately useful as you start developing Domino web applications. Once again, the form validation section will help you to understand how you can use JavaScript to do your form validation instead of making round trips to the server to edit the Domino form using @Formula language. You will have to work a little harder to translate some of this into the Domino development environment, however. Since Domino translates Notes design objects into HTML "on the fly", you may never end up coding |
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