JavaScript: The Missing Manual

by David Sawyer McFarland

Book Overview

JavaScript is an essential language for creating modern, interactive websites, but its complex rules challenge even the most experienced web designers. With "JavaScript: The Missing Manual," you'll... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596515898
• ISBN13: 9780596515898
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great JavaScript Book

There are lots of JavaScript books on the market now. Most of the time they are the same as any other book. With the recent influx of JavaScript books focusing on Ajax its difficult to find a book that focuses on the basics as well as showing you how to use a library in effective and practical ways. JavaScript: The Missing Manual is really 2 books in one. The first part of the book (up to Chapter 5) focuses on teaching the reader the basics of JavaScript. From the basic syntax to conditional statements to objects. Then the book switches gears a bit and talks about JavaScript libraries and the most popular library so far: jQuery. jQuery is a very popular and powerful library that many commercial websites now use (including Google) and should be understood by anybody wanting to further develop their JavaScript skills. The author talks about jQuery and how it can be used and then shows the reader in a couple chapters how it can be used in practical examples. Examples are such as automatic pull quotes, event listeners, Page FAQ, effects, adding search in forms, form validation, and much more. I've never seen a jQuery book that the author uses so many practical examples. There are a few jQuery books by Packt publishing, but they are mainly reference books re-stating the jQuery documentation. This book really goes into detail of how and why jQuery would be useful instead of just showing you how to do something and then moving on. The author goes into detail about the jQuery UI project and then the last 2 chapters talks about how you can use jQuery with Ajax. No JavaScript is perfect, but his book comes very close. A great buy and I highly recommend it.

This book should be a template for how technical manuals should be written.

This book is excellent. The author's writing style makes it very easy to read and he effectively teaches you the material. He does kind of take you through baby steps, but he does it in such a way that he keeps your interest. I appreciated that when he referred to something already covered he would give you the page number(s) where he covered it. He also breifly repeats things which I found very helpful. I especially liked that he keeps it simple; unlike many technical authors who seem to put too much emphasis on trying to sound smart with using really big words and long bloated sentences. This book should be a template for how technical manuals should be written.

Are you still writing your own javascript libraries?

I haven't completed this book yet, so I will come back and update this review once I have, but I wanted to get something out there to convince others who might be on the fence about buying this book. First off, it's more of a jQuery book than it is a Javascript book. Sure jQuery is a library that runs on top of Javascript, but it's important to make that distinction. The first 100 pages or so of the book get you quickly up to speed with Javascript statements, variables, string arrays, functions, regular expressions, etc. The basics are covered quite well with a number of succinct and well-explained examples. Up next the author covers the basics of modifying the document object model (DOM) or quite simply: adding, changing and removing HTML content on a page. He shows you the basic document object methods and how to do things "the hard way". He doesn't spend much time on the "hard way" and quickly introduces the lightweight, fast and widely accepted jQuery library. When I first heard about jQuery, I was skeptical. I like writing my own code. I like being able to understand the nuts and bolts of what is being interpreted or executed at runtime. Sadly, Javascript doesn't always run the same way on different browsers and different operating systems. Writing cross-browser code isn't impossible, in fact the SitePoint book Simply Javascript was a good tutorial on how to write your own "cross-browser" library, it's just that jQuery adds so much more. It adds in helper methods for selecting HTML elements on your page (the $ CSS selector syntax), cross-browser event handling, plug-in support, and much more. More and more people are starting to use jQuery and Microsoft and Nokia have even given it heavy endorsements. Getting back to the book. I'm not quite finished yet, but gazing ahead in the chapters I see a lot of great stuff: enhancing forms input, forms validation, dynamic tooltips, sortable tables, interactive images, doing ajax with jQuery and more. After this one, I'm going to go back to my jQuery in Action book and then tackle John Resig's (one of the primary authors of jQuery) book Secrets of the Javascript Ninja! Whoever thought Javascript could be this much fun? I certainly didn't! I've always hated Javascript. Give me Windows Forms, WPF, Silverlight, VB6, MFC, anything... I've always despised Javascript programming. Maybe a little less now that jQuery is here... :)

Another GEM by The Missing Manual!!!

I've been saying for years that The Missing Manual line of books is one of the best publishing lines and 'JavaScript: The Missing Manual' keeps the tradition going. The thing that jumps out at me instantly is how RELEVANT this book is the Web 2.0 world. With heavy emphasis on AJAX, JQuery, interacting with Web 2.0 sites like Google Maps and the like, this book is fantastic for any and all JavaScript developers new and old. Packed with 500+ pages of material, the chapter listing is as follows: 01. Intro 02. Javascript 101 03. Logic & Control 04. Words, Numbers, Dates 05. Dynamically Modifying Web Pages 06. Events 07. Images 08. Navigation 09. Web Forms 10. Interface expansion 11. AJAX 12. Basic AJAX 13. Troubleshooting & Debugging 14. Javascripts next steps My only complaint with this book is that I wish they had decided to publish this in COLOR. Many of TMM books are published in color and some don't require it but I think this one should have been. Overall an exceptional book for JavaScript developers today and in the future. AWESOME! ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Javascript/jQuery

I have David's CSS book and was waiting for this book to come out. I can understand one of the author's reservations about this book being jQuery specific, but if you stop to think of it, is also one of its strengths. There are "n" number of Javascript books out there which are pretty good, but do not take you beyond beginning/inermediate Javascript programming. Realistically and practically, in order to get anything useful done in a reasonable amount of time, you have to use one of the frameworks. It could be jQuery, Prototype/Scripty, Dojo, Yahoo, any of these frameworks will do. The author has chosen to use jQuery which is an excellent choice. Actually, my nitpicking is on the other side, i.e., the author should have left beginning Javascript material to any one of the other books and simply focused on Javascript with jQuery. His presentation style is very effective and he obviously knows CSS/Javascript world very well. Even better, he can communicate it equally well. If you are beyond the introductory phase in CSS/Javascript world and are looking to build something useful beyond the toy pages, this book along with his CSS book becomes very useful. jQuery, without a doubt, is a superior framework. I prefer it to Prototype and Scriptaculous. I do not know Yahoo or Dojo so I cannot comment on them. I would buy other books from David again. In fact, I would love to see an "advanced" book where he brings together all of his knowledge and communication skills for creating "professional" web front-ends. Keep the same tutorial format though.