Amazon.co.uk Review
JavaScript Programmer's Reference documents the standard versions of JavaScript, JScript, and ECMAScript and also catalogues the extensions which major browser publishers have added to the languages. In essence, this book is a resource for finding out how the major browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera) implement their Document Object Models (DOMs), both standard and proprietary, and the means by which they access DOM elements through JavaScript and similar scripting languages.
This is a reference, so don't expect it to teach you JavaScript through any sort of tutorial (although reading the object descriptions can be very illuminating). Cliff Wootton has chosen to organise his work alphabetically, like a giant encyclopaedia of objects, reserved words, operators, filters, and other aspects of JavaScript and the DOM standards. As an appendix he includes a cross-reference which associates individual properties, methods, and event handlers with the objects to which they belong. Once you've located the entry you want, you'll have easy access (in the case of an object) to inheritance information, a syntax summary, and plain-English advice on what the object does. Tables provide implementation details for each property, method, and event handler, so you know what versions of which browsers support the language feature you wish to use. There are also references to standards documents and occasional illustrations of how to use the language element in working code. Though rare the illustrations are generally effective in clarifying the significance of language elements and the relationships among objects.
Cool features include Wootton's documentation of common errors and incorrect assumptions. For example, he's included an entry on Bar.visibility, a nonexistent property sometimes assumed to exist in the Netscape Navigator object model. The correct property is Bar.visible, the author points out. Also note that operators and other non-character entries don't appear at the front, before the "A" entries, as is conventional. They've been "transliterated", if that's the word, so you have to look up "Add" in order to find out about the + operator. Overall though, this is a fine JavaScript reference made excellent by its companion CD-ROM, which includes the entire body of printed reference material (plus some extra) in searchable form. --David Wall
Book Description
JavaScript is the scripting language of the Web. Its widespread use in web applications, and support in all modern browsers and in server-side and administration environments, make it an essential part of the programmers' toolkit.
Complexity and confusion in JavaScript come not from the language, but from the number of different implementations, each with widely varying support for different APIs and standards. Written from extensive programming experience gained in developing components for a major website, this book helps you navigate those difficulties.
The accompanying CD not only presents this entire book in PDF format, fully hyperlinked and viewable with Acrobat Reader (tm), but provides a cross-referenced, lexical reference that includes over 3500 entries, giving an even more comprehensive, browser-based companion to the book.
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