Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Maturity of the language itself
Comment: When I first started programming javascript that lasted only a week or so (this was around 2000), the trouble I had with it was with the loose typing and the generality of the language. After reading the core portion of this book, I got to see the advantages and power of what I had problems with. It only took me 12 hours to go from literally clueless to semi-proficient. It also helped that I went through a whole semester of software design in C++. Another subtle part of the book that you do not need to have a semester of software design to learn the language, the author does well to explain the material well. If you are new to javascript, I'd probably get another book to go along with this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, complete and well written.
Comment: Authoritative, very well written, very well structured, complete, a pleasure to read.
The intricacies of Javascirpt are very well explained, it might not be an easy read for the average script kiddie but if you want a book that thoroughly describes the language and its browser integration, events, dom, css handling ... look no further.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference
Comment: Excellent reference book -- well organized, especially the DOM reference section, and easy to understand. Clear explanation in the introductory chapters.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Guide, Seriously
Comment: This book will take you from zero to hero! I read it cover-to-cover twice after having a year or so of javascript experience, and each time I learned a great deal. The reference section is indispensable too.
If you want to learn the language inside and out and start playing with the big boys, get this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An excellent cohesive reference, truly the definitive guide to JavaScript as we know it
Comment: This book is a fantastic reference. So many technical books typically live short lives, we use them once on a single project and never touch them again, however David Flanagan's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has clear value and longevity.
This book provides 350+ pages of reference material for the Core JavaScript Language and Client-side JavaScript (the online Mozilla Developer Center is one of the few references that comes close to this level of comprehensive reference). In addition to these 350+ pages of reference material, there are 500+ pages of dialog that linearly walk us through the JavaScript fundamentals into more complex concepts. This books huge size (900+ pages) can be daunting, and is one definite drawback. Its sweeping breadth of topics (from JavaScript language operators to using Flash with JavaScript) can be both informative or confusing - reading JavaScript: The Good Parts (140+ pages) concurrently will certainly complement your understanding of JavaScript.
In short this book is the most complete references for JavaScript as we've come to know it, it covers JavaScript from A-Z, it's permeated with good advice - and for good reasons too, this is its 5th Edition, it has been recognized as one of the best books in JavaScript, and has been reviewed or edited by some of the JavaScript greats: Peter-Paul Koch (ppk on JavaScript), and Douglas Crockford (JavaScript: The Good Parts) to name a few.
I highly recommend this book, and am looking forward to Flanagan's newest book The Ruby Programming Language.
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