Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good book.
Comment: This is I believe the best book about basic Javascript on the market right now.
Pros: Technically complete, solid writing style, understandable examples, no better intro books on the market.
Cons: Authors repeatedly show that they prefer class-based object systems, which Javascript is not. Authors do not effectively teach advanced Javascript prototype-based object usage and in fact seem to view it as a nuisance to be avoided. Authors don't regularly use closures except in section on closures.
I would recommend following this book up with "Javascript: The Good Parts" and making sure you fully grok how to use closures to avoid namespace pollution.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Language Explanation I've Ever Seen
Comment: I've learned a lot of tech in my time, and this book does the best job explaining the fundamentals of a language that I've ever come across. Flanagan basically builds the whole language piece by piece, explaining the fundamentals of every aspect.
There are some more esoteric techniques he doesn't cover, but I hardly consider that a shortcoming; aside from those, he basically covers the entire breadth of JavaScript, both in its core design and in practical browser-based applications. This really is the definitive book on JavaScript, even if it is two years old (which is ages in Internet time).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, a little boring
Comment: This book is downright comprehensive and thoroughly deserves its "definitive guide" title.
But, the example scripts the author gives are long and deadly boring, which is why I won't give it five stars.
To "get" JavaScript, you need shorter scripts which are easier to learn from.
My recommendation is to use this book in conjunction with the w3schools website.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost Too Thorough. Not the best Choice for Beginners/Creatives
Comment: This is the book all the JS rockstars out there tend to recommend to people. I don't think it's for everybody personally. It's very thorough and explains JS and its various incarnations at a high level of intricacy that I wouldn't recommend to beginners who are easily distracted (i.e. more heavily creative-brained designers). I'm fairly evenly brained myself and I occasionally found myself zombie-reading as exciting as some of the specifics are too me.
On the other hand, if you want to know just about everything there is to possibly know about JS, this is the book. And that's worth five stars to me.
A good place to get a start with JS if you've never programmed is a decent class or self-teaching the basics online. Then I recommend Jeremy Keith's DOM scripting. Then the Complete Reference. Then this bruiser when you really want get in deep.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy read and understanding
Comment: Great book, easy read, well formated and very instrutive. You will find everything that you need about JavaScript (covering standard ECMAScript v3). From the basics to the most advance about the language.
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