Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good book but 4th edition starting to become out-dated
Comment: I have had this book for years. I really like this book a lot.
It teaches you the language. It is a good reference for the syntax of Javascript 1.5. It also does a decent job of teaching DHTML. Some foreknowledge of HTML is going to be helpful. That can easily be gained from other books, reading the spec, or going through some of the HTML tutorials on the web. This book tells you how to access the structure of an HTML document - and change it.
Amazingly, it really did not start to become obsolete for almost half a decade. For a computer book on a heavily used computer language, that is great.
In late 2005, Mozilla released Firefox 1.5 which included a new version of Javascript: Javascript 1.6. Unlike some updates, this one was a doozy.
Javascript 1.6 introduced a feature called E4X - Ecmascript for Java. This powerful feature actually upgrades the language, making XML fragments a first class data type.
What this means is two things:
First, you can put XML fragments in your program. Just as quoted strings are interpreted as string literals, these fragments are treated as XML literals. No quoting or anything is required: the parser just sees them and knows what they are.
Second, you can evaluate XPath-like expressions to find things in an XML fragment value. Those things would be attribute values, text content, and elements that are in it.
Today, XML is much more important to organizations and much more useful to programmers than it was in 2001. It is a given that easier, more powerful ways for programmers to work with XML are going to grab programmers' interest.
Another thing has changed since 2001. AJAX programming has become white-hot. Website users like it because the system seems more responsive. Programmers like it because it lets them create web sites that seem more fun and are more impressive to a generation numbed-out by constant fill-in-form/Submit cycle of web pages. Companies like it because it AJAX is "in" and having it on their site can draw people to it by word of mouth or as marketable feature.
AJAX programming relies on the XMLHttpRequest object. That is not described in this book. Consequently AJAX programming is not explained in it.
A lot of AJAX components & effects libraries; e.g. Prototype.js, scriptaculous (script.aculo.us if you are looking for it on the web), etc., were in high gear by 2005. Since the book came out years before that, it does not mention any of these, tell what they can do, or explain how to write programs that use them.
Two other standards got added to Firefox 1.5 when it was released in 2005: SVG content and the CANVAS element. While CANVAS is a new invention, it is already supported by Apple's Safari 2 web browser that came with Tiger, released in early 2005. SVG is a very mature standard, invented in the late 1990s - but not really included in a widely distributed piece of software until Firefox included it. From watching what is going on in Apple's Safari development site, it seems likely Safari will gain SVG support sometime in 2006.
These 2 graphics capabilities are both important.
The CANVAS element is perfect for realtime and/or interactive graphics. For instance, it would be great for a "paint" program or a constantly-updated graph/chart display.
The SVG content is XML. The elements describe how to draw some shapes and text, fill them in, draw the borders, and perform transformations on them - as well as fancy effects like "shear". The power of SVG is huge. It can be used to draw all of the things described, plus more advanced things like "quadratic bezier curves". This makes it also suited to render art objects or sophisticated two-dimensional visualizations.
Now, go back to what is in the 4th edition of the book. The coverage of the different types of objects is covered in different sections - based on what the objects are used for. This is fine, but then there needs to be a special alphabetized index as well as detailed table of contents that shows you where to find each one - and what is in each section. Reading the whole book is not an option when you are in a hurry. When you are doing stuff on the web, you are always in a hurry. So, ways to find things quickly and survey quickly what is there - that is crucial.
I think a 5th edition of this book could be phenomenal, if it takes care of the omissions I have cited. Even in its present form, it does a good job of teaching the language - with the exception of the missing items I have noted.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Comment: I wasn't a complete beginner to programming, but I was a complete beginner to JavaScript when I read this. JavaScript (also known as ECMA-262) is a beautiful language, so I don't know how much of my fondness for this book the language deserves instead, but I love it. This technical book is one of my favorite books overall, even rivalling (though still falling far short of) "Atlas Shrugged".
Readers of this book will scoff at books claiming to teach advanced JavaScript topics, such as "DHTML Utopia" from the (generally worthless) SitePoint series. It takes the reader all the way from beginning to advanced topics until DHTML is simple. The author even covers the sorts of best practices, such as feature detection rather than browser detection and JavaScript segregation from HTML, for which later writers on the web claim credit and expect praise. (I don't mean to suggest that Mr. Flanagan was the original source. I only mean to condemn second-handers who mystify the field of programming to win undeserved respect for espousing common-sensical and commonly-espoused principles from the sorts of people who are afraid to read technical books.)
The author omitted much that is nonstandard and particular to Internet Explorer, but after reading this, one can easily learn whatever he needs to know about Internet Explorer's flawed DOM implementation from Microsoft's MSDN library site.
Some people want short, simple books that will help them write simple pages within a few hours or days. They don't like this book, which is for people who want to master JavaScript, master web browsers' Document Object Model implementations, and master client-side web programming to write complex solutions to real problems. The author even covers regular expressions well enough for readers immediately to use them to complete complex tasks.
If you want to master web programming, be patient and read this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Authoritative Guide to JavaScript
Comment: "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" is not a step by step guide to JavaScript any more than an encyclopedia is a step by step guide. The book does provide an authoritative analysis of the language including a brief history of the language, data types, operators, statements, functions, objects, and arrays.
The author does a good job of addressing some of the assumptions of the language and how these assumptions may or may not be like other languages such as C++ or Java. The author also clarifies the different levels of support for certain aspects of the language both within the discussion and with the large JavaScript reference section. The book also provides a handy and thorough W3C DOM reference for working with various aspects of DHTML.
Some of the material in this book will provide a critical understanding to JavaScript's more advanced features. With the emergence of AJAX, many web developers are turning to JavaScript to provide solutions for dynamic web based applications. Now that JavaScript is more fully supported in modern browsers, web developers may want to turn to "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" to enhance or polish existing JavaScript skills.
If you are looking for a quick introduction to JavaScript, you may find yourself disappointed. However, if you are already familiar with JavaScript and need a reference to look up an answer to your problem or need a guide for fine tuning your DHTML skills, you may that this book is a rich resource for you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Definitive guide book needs definitive help
Comment: This review applies to "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition" by David Flanigan, published by O'Reilly.
I'm a big fan of O'Reilly books, but this one doesn't get me where I need to go.
1) The topics are assumptive and don't include useful examples.
2) There are too few coding examples.
3) If not a regular coder in a OO language, this book will be especially frustrating.
4) The 'context' of meaning in examples and the code are routinely out of step. A lot of contextual (or what I call contextual at least) information is missing. The index seems like it was auto-generated, meaning it wasn't really meant for a human being to find anything with, just there because a book has to have an index.
For instance, I wanted to add some content using JavaScript to add to the body of the current page, but the only 'adding' reference is for mathematical operations. Looking under 'writing' or other similar words again doesn't give anything to do with adding content to a page already loaded. Then there's the whole 'self' and 'window' concept, which is great if I wanted to 'replace' the currently loaded page with content, but never in the book does it mention what to do with the current 'page', not the current 'window'. I tried other things like 'with' and so on, but 'with' doesn't seem to refer to the page, only other commands. Not really useful.
The index and chapters for this book really hamper understandning of what JavaScript can and cannot do. Invariably, I pour through the book, chuck it against the wall after fifteen-to-thirty minutes, scream, then spend another hour or so searching the 'net for an answer.
JavaScript is a hard technology to (truly) master, and with something called the "Definitive Guide", I thought I would have the tool I needed to get me, a code-tweaker, through my projects.
I don't think I found a single well-explained answer in this book to any JavaScript question ever. That's sad.
Save your money and buy something else. I've never been more unhappy with a book in my life than I was with this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book is useless....
Comment: This book was required for my CSC 301 "Distributed Software Systems" course in college. I would get alot of programming assignments and try to use the book as a reference to learn the syntax of the language, but, there are virtually no examples to look at and learn from. Maybe when I'm at a more advanced level with JavaScript, I'll appreciate it more, however, right now I'm giving it two thumbs way down.
If you are a beginner to JavaScript, this book is not for you. Even if you have some programming coursework under your belt, this book is not for you. I've taken alot of programming courses and never really had any problems finding answers to my questions, but, I look through this book and I can't find the answers I'm looking for.
Don't waste your money on this book.
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