Learning JavaScript: Add Sparkle and Life to Your Web Pages

by Shelley Powers

Book Overview

If you're new to JavaScript, or an experienced web developer looking to improve your skills, Learning JavaScript provides you with complete, no-nonsense coverage of this quirky yet essential language for web development. You'll learn everything from primitive data types to complex features, including JavaScript elements involved with Ajax and dynamic page effects. By the end of the book, you'll be able to work with even the most sophisticated libraries...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596521871
• ISBN13: 9780596521875
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Learn Javascript Like A Pro!!

'Learning JavaScript' by Shelley Powers is an exceptional book for becoming a Javascript superuser TO-DAY!! With over 300 pages of content written in a manner that is perfect for newbies and even experienced developers looking to pick up something new. The latest edition of this fantastic book covers the newest hot fad technology AJAX and the information is spread out over 14 chapters. I absolutely love the 'Learning' books by O'Reilly, as these books do exactly that. When I see the word 'Learning' in front of a technology, I want to be able to envision said book being like starting a course taught in the classroom. With this book I can do exactly that, taking my skills to the next level! If you are a web developer and use Javascript on a daily basis in your life, this is the perfect starting point for you to become a better programmer. If you are an experienced programmer and want to start using Ajax, this is also a wonderful option for you. Fantastic O'Reilly styling, great writing, and easy content, this is awesome!! ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Looking at JavaScript throught the eyes of an ActionScripter

Learning JavaScript by Shelley Powers Copyright 2007 ISBN-10: 0-596-52746-2 or ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52746-4 Review written by Linda Weller This book was really a surprise!! I wasn't sure that I was going to like it. It however, proved to be packed with lots of useful information. As a huge fan of ActionScript, I saw the many parallels that are spoken of in regards to these two languages. It was fun going through it to see that there is so much I already know of JavaScript because I know ActionScript. There are similarities but, there are also differences. One being that JavaScript hasn't gone in the direction of OOP as much as ActionScript has. Shelley makes clear that Java Script cross-browser incompatibility has been based on DOM or CSS differences not the Java Script language. JavaScript is useful for form field validation, setting and retrieving web cookies, providing feedback for incorrect form entries, hiding and showing elements, moving elements about the page, capturing user events and adjusting them on the page accordingly, scrolling content, and interfacing with a server-side application without leaving the page. The syntax for including a JavaScript library or script file in your web page is This is helpful to know when as a Flash developer you will need to use this line of code in the header of your HTML file to use the Flash (SWF) Object as a work around for the Microsoft Eula. Comments are written the same way in both languages. I appreciate the higher-level view of programming this book gives you. The author has written books not only on JavaScript but, ASP and Unix so it really has a technical flavor. Comments are written the same way in both languages. One thing that is quite different is the use of ellipses.... They mean that what follows is processed if the equality operators are evaluated to be true. The author gives you a real history of the use of JavaScript. She explains how ten years ago when most browsers were on their first or second version, JavaScript contents were enclosed in HTML comments . This was done to keep some browsers from printing the output of the script tag to the page. When the script was enclosed between these HTML comment tags the browsers didn't know it was there. However, that is not something we do today because browsers that don't understand JavaScript are long gone and use of these tags conflicts with pages created as XHTML. There is discussion about all the programming basics for JavaScript like data types and variables, scope, statements, conditional statements, switch statements, and conditional operators, loops, regular expressions, functions, and objects. Shelley even gives you the URL for a free JavaScript editor. And many useful links full of JavaScript libraries. The DOM 2 Event Model is discussed. Each object has 3 methods: addEventListener, removeEventListener, and dispatchEvent. Then the author goes on to talk about JIT Validation. This stands for Just-in-Time. It is

Excellent resource for learning MORE javascript

This is not a book for beginners. Let me repeat: this is not a book for beginners. Although the Preface states, "Readers of this book should be familiar with web page technology, including CSS and HTML/XHTML ... [p]revious programming experience isn't required, though some sections may require extra review if you have no previous exposure to programming," there is a strong assumption from the start that the reader at least (a) has some experience with current programming concepts and practices, (b) has some experience with web page coding and practices, or (c) has a lot of time to learn (a) and (b) while working through the book. That said, however, this really is an excellent resource. I fall into categories (a) and (b) above, but I'm rusty when it comes to javascript, and wanted something of a refresher. Instead, the book had the effect of dropping me into a working laboratory where everything, though nicely explained, remained confusing for quite a way into the book. But by the time the author got to the complex stuff, it all made sense and fell together pefectly, rather like finally understanding how all the tools in that laboratory make everything work so smoothly. The book seems fast paced, and often left me wishing there were more detailed explanations of some of the examples. But the concepts and examples are interwoven, so just working through the book brought some understanding. The end of each chapter has review questions, with the answers at the end of the book, for those who find that helpful. But what impressed me was that the errata sheet is already available at O'Reilly. There are a few errata, and they'll be handy to know if you're trying the examples given in the book. Additional resources are also sprinkled throughout the book which all appear to still be working. The author's practical bias comes through very strongly in the book. In the introduction, and throughout the book, there are frequent "best practices." Paramount to her philosophy of best practices is the admonition, "whatever JavaScript functionality you create, it must not come between your site and your site's visitors." Consequently, she often recommends solutions other than javascript to ensure accessibility by all types of browsers and users. There are also good discussions of the issues surrounding using javascript, especially the cross platform issues and what is on the horizon. Because of the browser compatibility issues, the author covers work-arounds each step of the way, with different options and a discussion of what works best and why. If book titles are supposed to be descriptive of the content, I'm not so sure "Learning Javascript" is the best title for this book, although it fits well if one thinks of it as learning another programming language. You'll find this book a lot more helpful if your familiarity with web technology includes using CSS and XHTML, or if you have some experience with another programming language.

More than a beginners book!

Based upon the title, you would think that it's a very basic beginners JavaScript book, but you would be wrong. When I first started reading the first 10 pages of chapter 1 I knew this would be a great edition to my ever growing library of JavaScript books. This book covers the very popular scripting language from a programming perspective, not like a "here's how to create a variable and use document.write to the page". Just within the first chapter the author talks about development tools such as the Firefox JavaScript console and Firefox DOM Inspector, and accessibility. Not the normal first chapters I have read in other JavaScript books. The book has a couple introductory chapters on the syntax basics such as Data Types and Variables (Ch. 2), Operators and Statements (Ch. 3), Objects (Ch. 4), and Functions (Ch. 5). Though these chapters really give you a lot of detail on the technical aspect of the language such as: equality with strings and objects, ternary operator, FIFO queue array techniques, anonymous functions, function closure and memory leaks. These more advanced topics I've never seen before in basic introduction chapters before. It was really interesting re-learning the basics with reviewing some new techniques and ideas. Then the book focuses on events, event bubbling and event handlers (Ch. 6) and forms and JIT Validation (Ch. 7). The JiT validation is a technique that is has been done a long time with JavaScript (validation after every form field entry) and has been usually replaced with form submission validation but the author has some good techniques with adding event listeners that may change your mind about it. The next chapter (Ch. 8), the author reviews using cookies, but also talks about alternative storage techniques like using Shared Object (SO) in Flash. This is only briefly mentioned but is something in never even heard about before so it was just interesting to think about another technique. Also, a practical application for SO storage was talked about with the Dojo.Storage component by Brad Neuberg that is a very popular in many Ajax toolkits. It kind of wets the appetites for more information, though. Additional topics of interest talked about in Chapter 8 were Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and how to prevent similar type of JavaScript attacks that are gaining popularity like SQL Injection did a few years ago. The meat and potatoes of the book are the chapters on DOM (Ch. 10) and Creating Custom Objects (Ch. 11), Ajax Basics (Ch 13), APIs (Ch.14). This is where you get practical knowledge on all the new things these "JavaScript libraries are doing. There's too much information to summarize these chapters but believe me they are worth the price of the book alone. Unless you are a JavaScript expert, this is a book that you should buy to bring up your skills up to speed. A must buy!

A Good Place To Start

If you're new to JavaScript, and web programming in general, this book is a good place to start. I won't go into the details of what is covered in each chapter (another reviewer already did a good job of that), nor will I comment on the typos that annoyed another (you see so many these days; is it simply unavoidable when writing a hundreds-of-pages technical book?). What I will say is that I like the way Ms. Powers oftentimes shares the "this is *why* it's done this way," as opposed to just spitting out how to do something. For me, folding a bit of history or context into an explanation always makes it easier to remember what is being discussed. I thought she covered everything she needed to in a nice, orderly, and logical fashion.