Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: tough book
Comment: my main problem is that some examples arent explained. and he sort of rushes through basic stuff, the book itself is not well organized. some stuff I had to reread, and some stuff I just gave up on. So I would recommend a more basic book and then tackling this one, If you wanna buy it, get it at a discount, dont pay full price like me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for new believers
Comment: For the new or not-so-new believer that needs practical instruction in how to grow in the Lord this book is an invaluable resource.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Comment: This book delivers what it promises. It is not "Become a Computer Programmer in 24 Hours", and it is not a reference tome. It is for people who want to *quickly* gain a good background in client-side web development. It's well-organized, current, touches on several related technologies (the DOM, AJAX, etc), and is clearly written. I had no trouble downloading working source code from its web site.
This book is an excellent follow-on to an HTML intro, because it shows the basics of how HTML, CSS, and Javascript all work together in working real-world web pages.
My particular focus at work is database technology, but my group supports a big web application. This book gave me the knowledge I needed to understand what all those ".JS" files do. I'm confident that if I needed to continue on and master this technology, I'd need nothing further on the topic beyond a good reference book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: OK information, Poor backup
Comment: This review applies to the fourth edition
The good:
1. Good introductory chapters on basic javascript.
2. I've always wanted to know how to do those neat drop-down menus. Now I can.
The bad:
1. Exercises at the end of the chapters have no answers. As in, if you can't figure it out, you're out of luck. (or maybe it's on the website -- see below)
2. The neat Virtual Fish Tank screen shown on the front of the book? You don't do that. (You do have some hover buttons, but that's better done in CSS now.)
3. By the last chapters, it seems to be a bit of a reach. Not sure I really care about creating a poker game. (Especially since I'd have to type several pages of code in -- see below)
4. Being that this was released in 2006, the HTML examples really ought to have been XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.1. There were more than a few things that would not pass validation in either of those types.
The UGLY:
The website is supposed to have the example code. It does, but having tried on two different computers, the downloaded zip file is corrupted. I've sent two emails to the publisher and heard nothing. So a lot of time can be spent doing typing instead of learning. No thanks.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book (for beginners)
Comment: Man, I have really struggled finding a book that I could learn from. I wanted a book that gave me structure, the same way I would imagine it would work in a classroom. After reading the "Javascript Bible" and "DHTML Utopia", I was still baffled and very, very frustrated.
Then I picked up "Teach yourself Javascript in 24 Hours". After reading this through the first time, I feel comfortable with the syntax, and various other parts of Javascript and even wrote a few rudimentary scripts myself.
I am reading this through a second time to make sure I didn't miss anything important.
Overall, this book is a great learning tool if you are new to Javascript and Object Oriented Programming. It does omit at least one major bit of Javascript knowledge, the Object Literal, which is apparently the best thing since sliced bread, but overall, this is a good book.
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