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 17 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.

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.

Very Decent Book, but Publisher Is Being Cheap! - 2008-04-28
Reviewer Rating:
First off, ***very*** disappointed that No Starch Press has decided to cheapen the book's look and feel by reprinting the current batch with thinner paper (~24 or 28-lb. paper, a bit heavier than plain copier paper) compared to the nice "hardcover-book-quality" 60-lb. paper stated in the colophon, even though the colophon still lists the paper used as being 60-lbs. A previous printing of the book also had blue-colored text, which really added a welcome "visual comfort" that's now sadly lacking. Look at a copy from the older print run in your local public library and you'll see what I mean. It simply looks and feels like a cheaper product now.

Having said all that, I think this is a very decent book for newbies, with a fairly "traditional textbook" approach to learning JavaScript. By "fairly traditional" I mean that its pedagogy is straightforward and the material is covered in the way you'd expect (nothing like "Head First JavaScript," which I also recommend as a good companion learning tool to this title [since you really can't expect to learn with just one book, especially if you're a newbie to programming]). I especially like how an English-Italian translation program is developed in the later parts of the book, tying together the various JavaScript and Ajax concepts explored.

So I would have given the book three stars for being a good, solid if unspectacular text but the cheaper paper and lack of blue ink in addition to black makes me unhappy.