Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wow - THE best Javascript book available!
Comment: I purchased the Netscape One Developer's Guide thinking it would provide answers to my Javascript questions - it answered very few, unfortunately. The 'Guide' doesn't begin to approach the ease of use, thoroughness or amount of information contained in "Javascript: The Definitive Guide". Javascript is as completely covered as it can be (with the free-flowing nature of WWW specifications, its hard to keep track of all the changes). I found the descriptions and examples informative, clear and concise and kinda fun sometimes. The layed back nature of the writing won't scare off novice coders/web developers and yet doesn't turn off more advanced developers. The book is cut in half - the first provides an introduction into Javascript and discusses its more important subjects while the second is a complete reference section for Javascript 1.2. It specifically treats the differences between Netscape and Internet Explorer whereas the Netscape One guide left that up to the reader to figure out - an oversight which relegates the Netscape One Developer's Handbook to the dusty bookshelf (way in the back). If you're doing web development and need to use Javascript - this is probably the only book you'll need. If you're doing web development and you're not using Javascript - you NEED this book - it will show you what you can do with simple client-side scripts.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book with some minor flaws.
Comment: I could not have done anything without this book. It started for me my whole 'Advanced Language' writing. Since reading this book I have written over 20 small JavaScript programs and 2 large applictaions.The book is readable (if somewhat boring at times) and highly understanble. The books sucession of topics gives you the basis for future topics, and allows for easy learning througout the whole book. I was dissapointed at the content of the chapter on 'Cookies', but with what you have from the rest of the book you can easily learn all about cookies from the web.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just Right For My Needs!...
Comment: Whenever I want a straight answer to a syntax question or am looking for a coding example to clone, I usually turn to the O'Reilly "Nutshell" book series. As a reference book, I find that "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" lives up to my expectations and needs -- no more, no less.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Third Edition Really Brings It All Together
Comment: I am impressed with the Third Edition. The design of this book is clear and intuitive. While the first half of the book isn't the greatest tutorial for beginners, it's a fine overview of the language that can jumpstart anyone with any programming skills at all. A few things kept me from giving it five stars. First, the book has a section on how to make your scripts backward-compatible (testing of the "appName" property and so on), but it barely mentions object detection (page 345), which is not only backward-compatible, but forward-compatible as well (if I could have replaced all the examples that use code similar to "if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/4')" with code like "if (document.layers)" I would be much happier). Second, this book tends to shortchange JavaScript's control of style properties: the "display" property isn't even mentioned, and while Navigator's layers get attention, IE4's comparable ability to work with DIVs is relegated to a short entry for the document.all array on page 470 (actually there is no mention of DIVs and no sample code -- I learned about it by reading Danny Goodman's JavaScript Bible, which has good info on this stuff under "Collections"). Danny is doing a "Dynamic HTML Reference" for O'Reilly, which might fill in the gaps in this book. This book isn't definitive, but it's still good -- Chapter 8 especially taught me some OOP stuff that I never had a chance to read about before.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best JavaScript book available.
Comment: This is a welcome addition to any web development or interface design library. Unlike so many other books on J(ava)Script this book is authoritative (as of its pub date) and compendious; it is an invaluable reference. Like most O'Reilly books, this one manages far more material in greater detail than the typical bookshelf-bending how-to behemoth in far, far fewer pages.- The syntax coverage is flawless, at times ruthless, and efficient. - Flanagan shows how powerful, and genuinely object oriented, JavaScript is--prototypes are typically ignored in other books on the topic, with Nick Heinle's as a notable but incommensurable exception. - Cross platform issues are handled well. When this book was written the IE/Netscape 4.x object models had not been fully explored and exposed as divergent as they are--no current book fully attacks this topic. Compatibility issues are handled straight back to Navigator 2.0. However, given recent browser developments, we're in need of a third edition (and Opera coverage). - The examples are clear, eminently useful, and will help out even cookbook coders. I've spun through at least 7 different books on this topic since 1996: if you're a beginner to programming, or a designer hoping to add to the toolbox, this one might be rough going at first. Once you're comfortable with JavaScript, this is the *only* book you will keep.
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