The Book of JavaScript teaches readers how to add interactivity, animation, and other tricks to their web sites with JavaScript. Rather than provide a series of cut-and-paste scripts, thau! takes the reader through a series of real world JavaScript code with an emphasis on understanding. Each chapter focuses on a few important JavaScript features, shows how professional web sites incorporate them, and takes readers through examples of how they might add those features to their own web sites. This thoroughly updated 2nd edition includes new chapters on Ajax, revised appendices, and new examples throughout. Summary sections and assignments close each chapter, making the book perfect for use in college courses or independent study. CD includes code and images for every example, answers to assignments, script libraries for hard-to-program applications, and many useful software programs.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 18 Ratings

Not a great book - 2009-07-14
Reviewer Rating:
Not a well written book. It has much content but arranged kind of random. Not interesting enough to read cover to cover. Author from[...]
CSS: The Missing Manual

Great book for learning JAVA, but it is a bit dated. - 2008-12-23
Reviewer Rating:
This book gives good clear explanations and instructions. Has great examples that you can also download from the books website. But it shows it's age when referencing Netscape continuously.

A Cold Rehash - 2010-01-31
Reviewer Rating:
David Thau originally wrote much of the material he compiled in this book for Webmonkey, a very good tutorial site that had its heyday back in the 1990s. (His tutorials are still there.) Thau was lauded on that site as something special. His articles really were good; his book, not so much.

The book has three problems:

The second edition is four years old and the author didn't satisfactorially update the second edition from the really outdated first edition. Some of the 'hacks' in the book aren't necessary today and there are better solutions to many of the problems these hacks are meant to address. In general, if you're learning something new, you should look for a book not more than a year old, two at most.

The material is choppy in places and its organization belies its source, namely, a series of articles published on the Web. What works as articles doesn't work, organically, as a book. I got the sense that each chapter wasn't part of a greater whole, leading inexorably to enlightenment, but rather a separate tutorial trucked in from somewhere else. If you're going to build your book that way, you have to say so.

This last problem may not be a problem at all for some of you. For me, however, David Thau never really connects: his light (and forced) attempts at humor fail and his style is that of detached teacher, someone who knows his stuff but hasn't figured out how to make his students share his enthusiasm for it. The cover illustration of a 'cool cat' admirably symbolizes Thau's approach to writing technical guides.

You could certainly work your work through this book and learn much about JavaScript. But you could do the same thing more efficiently, more enjoyably with any of several more current books.

I'd like to see the author address the first two problems in his third edition, if there ever is one. I wouldn't ask him to change his style, however, so the third issue will remain, a problem for some, a recommendation for others.

The best book of Javascript that I have found... - 2009-08-14
Reviewer Rating:
Out of all the Javascript books that I have owned or found in the library, this book seems to be clearly written and easy to follow. I am a techie but have not found a Javascript book that I have liked or have found it clear enough to follow until I found this book. It starts out very slowly but this is not bad for beginners (I am included in this group).

I agree there are some typos in the book; I have ran across a few of them but they have been minor (so far that is)...

All of the book examples are online and can be downloaded. There are some examples that have external js files that are included online so this is not an issue...

I just find it amazing that their are a lot of books on programming languages but most of them are either poor organized and/or written...

I'm glad I bought this book - 2008-07-28
Reviewer Rating:
I just needed a hand to automate some forms and this book did it for me quickly and painlessly. There may be better Javascript books around but this one makes it easy. He presents the information in a simple way that you can start using right away. The biggest problem for people starting out is too much detailed explanation that you can learn later as you get the hang of the language. This book is organized in a logical and practical approach. You can start writing code almost right away and you don't have to be a rocket surgeon. The back of the book has projects, a language reference section and a good index. The proof is in the pudding; it works.