Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Comment: This was a great book which really helped me get a good foundation on clean web page design. Easy to read and great examples.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but not necessarily for beginners
Comment: (6/3/06) This book is excellent for people who have been coding basic javascript for years, and want to get up to date with modern standards. For me it was a theoretical book rather than a step by step tutorial (I read it on the treadmill, not in front of my computer). There are other books that might go into more detail or show you neat tricks. But, unlike the Quickstart guide, this one shows you valid, standards compliant, accessible methods of coding. This book is repetitive, which I think is a good thing: it reviews what you've learned, so you can pick it up much later and continue where you left off, and you're not always flipping back because a point was explained 3 chapters ago.
Modern web standards encourage seperating HTML, CSS and Javascript. Now that there is less need to browser sniff, you can use the DOM to completely remove all event handlers from the HTML page and really seperate out the Javascript. This book shows you how, and makes a point as to "why".
This is a programming book that you can actually read. I highly recommend this book for web developers who have been stunted from adding dynamic features to their websites because of browser compatibility issues, fears of 508 non-compliance, WAP, etc. If and want to take that small step (though it may seem like a leap) into modern javascript programming for the web, this is a great book.
Added Note: (5/27/08) I wrote the original review exactly 2 years ago. Since then, browser support of javascript has come a long way. So, would like to reiterate, yes, this was a great book. Now it's only a great book for people who have been doing webmaster work for more than 5 years (old standards) and want to learn how to migrate to current standards. Great intro book for that. Useless for individuals who have been doing web development for less than 3 years, since they likely started my coding with current standards.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Some very useful nuggets with some caveats
Comment: The book presents an excellent overview of DOM scripting for those who are unfamiliar with the topic. If you have read other books that cover the subject, though, you will only find a few additional useful peices of information not found elsewhere (e.g., writing code that degrades gracefully is *excellent* in this book).
I did have some problems with the book though. As at least one other reader mentioned, the book is *extremely* repetitive; to the point where I was utterly frustrated with an otherwise well written book. Also, this book is most definitely for beginners. As I mentioned, if you have some DOM experience you won't find this book as useful as someone without any such experience.
Overall, I feel the few useful nuggets I took away were useful but probably not worth the full price of the book. A different but excellent choice might be "DHTML Utopia - Modern Web Design Using Javascript and DOM" by Stuart Langridge. It covers the DOM as well as other very useful javascript technologies.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely repetitive
Comment: I enjoyed this book. It was a very easy read and it introduced me to the subject. That said, the book should have been about 1/4 of the size it is. It is the most repetitive thing I have ever read; sometimes frustratingly so.
It should also be noted that this book is definitely for beginners.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best!
Comment: I've been looking awhile now for a book or a resource that can teach me what is good and the best practices of web design... and I found it in this book!. Great author, although with some errors (but is is corrected in the books website). Nice job !
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