Customer Rating: 
Summary: A must read for JavaScripters
Comment: This book was first suggested to me by an article written in Web Monkey by Thau. (Check it out at www.webmonkey.com) And from what I have read so far, this book seems to live up to it's title of being the definitive guide.Unlike the book however, many aspects of JavaScript (together with browser design) have a long way to go before we get to see a proper definitive version. As such, much text is wasted in pointing out the operational differences between Netscape and Internet Explorer as well as differences between versions. And so, redundant aspects in programing web pages becomes a central issue in most of this book. Hence, the book becomes a little less consise, especially towards the end. Flanagan does his best by avoiding some newer features offered by IE4 (in higher levels of the DOM) and as such the book is in one aspect incomplete. But in walking the tightrope between being consise and being complete is not an easy task, and I feel that Flanagan has done a superb job of removing the fluff without cutting a hole in the cloth. A highly recomended text for anyone who is familiar enough with the basics of HTML (and with just a dash of Java.) Beginners however may find it a little difficult to follow at first and may try something a little more light weight. (Webmonkey.com is a good place to start) In short, this book is one which no serious JavaScript programmer should be without. The only question you should ask yourself before buying is book is therefore, "Is JavaScript really worth the trouble?" I think it is.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good first book on Javascript + great reference section
Comment: This was my first book on Javascript and I think I got pretty lucky. I purchased the 3rd edition which covers up to version 1.2 of Javascript. However, we up to version 1.4 of Javascript (this may change tomorrow!) so this book lacks coverage of some of the latest features.That said, it is a well-paced introduction to Javascript and, in contrast to some reviewers, I found it easy to follow. The examples are appropriate for the introductory level of the book. Some parts are better than others. For example, the chapters on constructor functions and object prototypes does a poor job of explaining the advantages of one over the other. On the other hand the coverage of the String and Date objects was excellent and indirectly explained much of the philosophy of the language. The reference section is superb -- there are many books in my library that would be much improved by such a reference section. This is the book I reach for when trying to remember the differences between slice, substr, and substring. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is that it is more than a year old now and starting to look dated. It's high time O'Reilly published a 4th edition.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outdated indeed!
Comment: Nice book, but definitely behind the times. IE5.5 goes way beyond what's here and due to AOL and Microsoft's hard work no other browser currently matters to real developers any more (even the last of the original Netscape developers conceded the browser wars quite some time ago). For a better reference try href=http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hard core Javascript theory.....at last.
Comment: After trying to learn javascript from the visual series "javascript for the world wide web, 3rd ed" (and being thoroughly disappointed), I finally have found a book that describes the fundamentals of the javascript language in detail. This book explains from an academic perspective the rules, usage, and syntax of javascript. It leads the reader into the depths of how javascript implements an object-oriented paradigm without getting too esoteric. It can be difficult reading at times, but the true nature of javascript programming is not that of a simple little scripting language as some would have you believe. The coding examples could have been better, with more full-sized scripts showing the language in action instead of the numerous 1-4 line code snipets. The one big distraction I noticed was the seemingly constant references to netscape navigator, and all the bugs present in older versions of that browser. Unfortunately, this dated the book and tended to highlight a bias when the author would have been better off staying with the academic focus. Even still, the majority of the theory is unaffected by nav or ie, and the reference section is essential for any serious javascript developer. It is noted that this book was copyright 1998, so "cutting edge" javascript extensions will not be included, but the fundamental theory behind the language remains intact. With the combination of this book (theory and reference) and the visual series book (cutesy web page tricks), I can finally get on with the task of finishing my web site.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not good for beginner!!!
Comment: This book is not for beginners. If you try to learn JavaScript from scratch, this is not the book for you.Try others. I only have little knowledge of JavaScript, I can not understand what this book try to convey. Lengthy description without good examples. It tells you a lot of things you don't need to know.The author likes to compare C/C++/CGI.. in this book in order to illustrate something I don't even care. Those readers who gave five stars to this book have already have great knowledge of JavaScript before they read this book (they forgot to mention that to you) or they are just genius. The only thing I find it useful is the reference.
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