Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: it's the sacred scripture of Javascript
Comment: Although you can always find snippets of Javascript online, sometimes you need to sit down with a paper book and read up on the whole schlemiel. This is THE essential reference for everything Javascript, which makes it important if exploring Ajax. It can be overwhelming for beginners, but it has a great index, and it won't be long before you're jumping here and there to get the real scoop on Javascript.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent update
Comment: I had the previous version and stupidly left it on an airplane. After getting the new version, I'm glad I had the excuse to upgrade. Great resource for newbies and experts alike!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Definitive Indeed!
Comment: I was always told this is THE BOOK on JavaScript, and I don't know of anybody who does regular web development that does not have this book on their book shelf. It's extremely comprehensive, and an excellent guide for everyone from novice to expert. I would say that my reference shelf would be incomplete without it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really good book
Comment: This book is highly readable and helped me understand client side scripting. As a long time server side scripter (php mostly), client side scripting was largely foreign to me, until after reading this book. Its full of useful examples and is clear on the difference between the true "standards" way of doing things, and what is required to make things work in non-standards compliant browsers. Oh, and Yes, the latest edition covers AJAX.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Indispensable Reference - A Worthy Upgrade
Comment: The previous edition of this book, 4th edition, remained at arm's length at all times at work and rescued me repeatedly from various day-to-day JavaScript challenges. It has become tattered from rigorous use. I always loved how the book was organized, with the first half as a walk through the entire gamut of JavaScript's workings -- tutorials, walk-thrus, code samples, cross-browser issues, and practical solutions -- and the second half of the book as a complete JavaScript language and DOM reference. That already very useful format has actually been improved upon. David has combined the DOM API reference and client-side JavaScript reference into a single alphabetized section. Now that I think about it, I did find myself flipping back and forth a lot in the previous edition, so this is a welcome improvement. Each object, property, and method contains a helpful "availability" of that item. This may be the standards spec it came from [DOM Level 2 HTML, ECMAScript v1], the JavaScript version in which it emerged [JavaScript 1.0], or a list of browser versions, if it is a proprietary feature. This is critical info to have at-a-glance - could perhaps save you 2 days of work implementing a non-standard, IE-specific JavaScript feature, when you could have been coding the standards-compliant equivalent. David has removed a lot of the deprecated, not-widely-adopted DOM interfaces that no longer apply to modern browsers. David has also moved focus away from some of the more oddball DOM interfaces that have been replaced by more sensible JavaScript objects that implement those interfaces, for example, window.getComputedStyle() rather than AbstractView.getComputedStyle(). In other words, David has removed all of the "stuff that still exists, but you no longer need to worry about". This makes for a more focused, less cluttered, "on topic", useful tome. I don't need to know about the 10 different methods that browser manufacturers fought over 7 years ago. Tell me what I need to know NOW to write practical, functioning, modern, cross-browser JavaScript. That's exactly what Mr. Flanagan has accomplished.
What else is new in the 5th edition?
1. Nested functions and closures.
2. A dedicated "Classes, Constructors, and Prototypes" chapter, with much more coverage on object-oriented programming in JavaScript.
3. A new chapter on Modules and Namespaces.
4. New chapter on scripting Java with JavaScript.
5. Coverage of the legacy (Level 0) DOM has been combined with the W3C standard DOM. More consolidation. Less flipping back and forth.
6. Cookies and Client-Side Persistence. Updated coverage on cookies, and brand new coverage of other client-side persistence techniques, like IE userData persistence, and Flash Shared Object Persistence.
7. AJAX - Coverage of scripted HTTP calls using the now famous XMLHttpRequest object.
8. XML - Demonstrates how to create, load, transform, query, serialize, and extract info from XML docs.
9. Client-Side Graphics - JavaScript's graphics capabilities. The cutting edge |
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