We know from the success of titles such as Web Standards Solutions, Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation, and the Web Designer's Reference that web designers are increasingly concerned with making sites that don't just look pretty, but are also built using current best practices.

There are three main technologies married together to create usable, standards-compliant web designs: XHTML for data structure, Cascading Style Sheets for styling your data, and JavaScript for adding dynamic effects and manipulating structure on the fly using the Document Object Model.

This book is about the latter of the three. DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model gives you everything you need to start using JavaScript and the Document Object Model to enhance your web pages with client-side dynamic effects. Jeremy starts off by giving you a basic crash course in JavaScript and the DOM, then move on to provide you with several real world examples built up from scratch including dynamic image galleries and dynamic menus, and show you how to manipulate web page style using the CSS DOM, and create markup on the fly.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 73 Ratings

I learned DOM scripting with this excellent book - 2009-07-27
Reviewer Rating:
I'm a long time front-end developer (HTML/CSS/PHP), first time DOM scripter. I've purchased a dozen JavaScript books over the years in an attempt to really master JavaScript/DOM scripting and none of them really taught me effective scripting like this book has. I immediately recognized the quality of this book after I saw it at Barnes and Noble. After flipping through and reading a few pages, I bought it on the spot.

The writing is exceptionally clear and succinct. Most programing books start out with a chapter or two of needless fluff about the history to pad out the pages. Keith doesn't do that. He gives a very brief introduction of JavaScript and the DOM, the dives right into teaching you how to code efficient, robust, and gracefully-degrable websites that are web 2.0 standards compliant and accessible (useful on clients without JavaScript). He builds on lessons learned from previous chapters, and it's very easy to follow. He starts off from the basics (variables, arrays, etc) and doesn't presume any JavaScript knowledge on your part, though I recommend having a programming background or at least some familiarity with JavaScript. For absolute beginners (you've never written a JavaScript function), this book may not be for you.

I use books as springboards to learning, and rarely ever go through an entire book. I got halfway through before I stopped because I had to develop a site. I was able to apply the techniques I learned right away (DOM image replacement, menu dropdown, non-JS browser compatible). You may be able to hit the deck running also after you learn how to navigate the DOM and manipulate its nodes (appendChild, setAttribute, etc). It took me about 2 wks to get to the point where I was comfortable without the book. The index is very helpful and I refer to it when I come across any obstacles.

Highly useful and recommended. I have now added another valuable skill to my resume.

************ UPDATE Sept 10, 2009 **************

I continue to be thankful for this book. I am now doing work in Flash using XML and the DOM scripting skills I learned for use in JavaScript are paying off. Because the DOM is a standard, it is a portable skill for working with other languages that use it. Highly recommended that you pick up this book.

Get this Masterpiece while you can!!! - 2009-11-17
Reviewer Rating:
This is no overstatement.

If you're like me, rummaging through book shelves/Amazon for a decent book on JS that doesn't assume anything but HTML,CSS about you, GET THIS BOOK!

Seriously, I read 2 books on JS and another 2 on AJAX before this one, only to realize that I had no clue how to actually WRITE javascript. I luckily stumbled upon this book and after 4 days reading it I'm no longer intimidated by verbose JS code. This book has got me implementing serious website functionality, from no experience with JS.

Moreover the book is layed out perfectly, with examples and implementations of everything you learn through it. You cannot possibly find a better book (I'm not getting anything for this review btw), just to show you how excited I am about this amazing piece of work.

No caveats, just GET IT!

TJM review of DOM Scripting... - 2009-11-03
Reviewer Rating:
For the most part this was an excellent book.
It doesn't go quite as far as I would have liked. I was looking specifically for information on creating a menu system with the DOM.

Excellent Coverage of Dynamic HTML Using Javascript - 2009-09-09
Reviewer Rating:
I know JavaScript pretty well but this book taught me a lot in areas that I was weak, i.e. creating HTML elements dynamically. Document.createElement("div") for example. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to use this type of programming.

Amazingly well structured and written - 2009-08-25
Reviewer Rating:
If have read a few books on javascript since i wanted to extend my toolbox of html, css and php. But this book is by far the best. Everything is so well explained that it seems too simple to be true. I did find the examples in other books quite confusing and sometimes hard to follow. Now I look at those examples and wonder why they made life so difficult. The codes could be written much more efficient and better structured. By going back to the DOM principles everything makes a lot more sense. Even my previous HTML and CSS files can be written a lot simpler with a lot less code and much better overview. It's like clearing your head.

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