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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Put simply O'Reillys Javascript book is The Bible
I bought this book two years ago because I was thinking of getting into the web development business. This is one of the most useful computer related books I have ever bought and now sits on my shelf looking battered and pawed, the way a good reference book should look! Flanagan takes the reader from basic skills to more complicated stuff like building Crossbrowser...
Published on 17 May 2001 by polyprecordsdotcom
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7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Can we have a review of the actual book?
I have the 4th edition of this book which is very good but out of date. Unfortunately so are the reviews, including the description provided by amazon all of which seem to apply to the 4th edition. So what is new in this Fifth edition? I am none the wiser as to whether this is worth the upgrade.
Published on 9 Oct 2006 by A. McPhee
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Put simply O'Reillys Javascript book is The Bible, 17 May 2001
I bought this book two years ago because I was thinking of getting into the web development business. This is one of the most useful computer related books I have ever bought and now sits on my shelf looking battered and pawed, the way a good reference book should look!Flanagan takes the reader from basic skills to more complicated stuff like building Crossbrowser Sniffers. All of the examples in the book are of practical use and I found them useful building blocks to many of the early projects I have worked on.
The command reference is extremely thorough , and well documented. This is the only Javascript book you will ever need, and once your copy becomes battered and pawed like mine, the chances are you will have become an expert Javascript programmer. Go buy this book!
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent guide / reference book for experienced programmers, 19 Aug 2002
I don't have enough knowledge of the subject independently of this book to rate its coverage in detail. I am a programmer experienced in other languages who had previously done some simple Javascript programming learnt "on the job". I found it a complete eye-opener as to the complexity and power of this deceptively simple language (i.e. not simple at all when you go below the surface). The book contains very useful and seemingly comprehensive reference material. It is written extremely clearly and well, to a standard that I have never before seen in computer manuals, and with lots of good examples. None of the tiresome jokeyness and dumbing-down shown by many US-written manuals! It could almost be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature (of its kind, at least). The author has done a brilliant job. Full marks! I have not previously bought this publisher's books, but I will always look out for O'Reilly manuals from now on, in the hope that they will all come at least somewhere close to the standard of this book.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
A needed update for an excellent guide, 15 Jan 2007
The 5th edition of the one and only bible of JavaScript, by the language guru David Flanagan, is not a surprise, but a beautiful confirmation. The 4th edition, which I've been using until a few days ago, was (and is) an invaluable reference even though it started to become a bit outdated. The new version is even more "biblic" than before, featuring nearly 1000 pages of in-depth explanation and reference. New sections include Ajax (of course, it's the cool thing of these years!), client side graphics (SVG, VML and <canvas>), JavaScript namespaces and communication with Flash and other embedded media.
The book can be divided in 2 sections: the guide - which occupies about 600 pages - and the reference which accounts for the remaining 400. Browsing the index of the book, it turns out the the parts are actually 4: for this article, I however merged the first two (the guide) and the last two (the reference).
The first section covers every JavaScript aspect, with a detailed explanation of the language and almost everything than can be achieved using it. What is being actually taught are the "roots" of all the JavaScript features: to build the complex things, you need to work on those roots (or to grab more high-level tutorials somewhere else). However, this book has everything you need, as you can figure the rest out!
The second section is the reason why every web coder will want to have this book on his desk everyday. The reference is detailed, accurate, thorough and very easy to browse. As I wrote above, it's divided in 2 parts: Core Language and Client-side JavaScript.
All in all, what can be said about this book? Even though I'm not fond of client side programming and prefer to script on the server, this is one of the few books for which I can really find nothing bad to say. It's well written, simple to understand, entertaining. There's also the Italian translation: there's the previous edition on the shelves in Italy at present time, but we'll hopefully see this new fantastic edition translated soon.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
The best JavaScript book available., 22 May 1998
By A Customer
This is a welcome addition to any web development or interface design library. Unlike so many other books on J(ava)Script this book is authoritative (as of its pub date) and compendious; it is an invaluable reference. Like most O'Reilly books, this one manages far more material in greater detail than the typical bookshelf-bending how-to behemoth in far, far fewer pages.- The syntax coverage is flawless, at times ruthless, and efficient. - Flanagan shows how powerful, and genuinely object oriented, JavaScript is--prototypes are typically ignored in other books on the topic, with Nick Heinle's as a notable but incommensurable exception. - Cross platform issues are handled well. When this book was written the IE/Netscape 4.x object models had not been fully explored and exposed as divergent as they are--no current book fully attacks this topic. Compatibility issues are handled straight back to Navigator 2.0. However, given recent browser developments, we're in need of a third edition (and Opera coverage). - The examples are clear, eminently useful, and will help out even cookbook coders. I've spun through at least 7 different books on this topic since 1996: if you're a beginner to programming, or a designer hoping to add to the toolbox, this one might be rough going at first. Once you're comfortable with JavaScript, this is the *only* book you will keep.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Best book for learning JavaScript, 9 Jan 2004
This book is better than Danny Goodman's JS Bible and Danny Goodman's Dynamic DHTML - The Definitive Guide (although a very good book in its own right). If you know some JavaScript but wish learn it properly then by this book, you will not be disappointed. Despite other peoples comments about it being dry and only good as a reference, I have to say I disagree. It's a book you can't put down once you start reading it and the best reference for JavaScript I have read. Probably not the ideal book for total newbie's but as long as you know the basics of JavaScript or have some experience with a similar scripting language such as PHP this book will set you on the right road.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Definitive ? Absolutely, 27 Feb 2007
After many years struggling with rudimentary JavaScript and never being able to find a sensibly structured book on the subject, a colleague recommended
'JavaScript - the Definitive Guide'. O'Reilly have never really impressed me as a publishing house but this book is the best there is. The coverage is as extensive as it is complete. Especially noteworthy is its carefully documented chapters on the relationships between functions and objects which other authors shy away from. Want to be as good as Dean Edwards ? This is the book to get you there.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
The works, 29 Jan 2004
I used to think of JavaScript as only good for adding fancy little effects in web pages, like image roll-overs. In fact it is a fully-fledged programming language capable of complex actions both in web pages and in other environments. As you learn the language you start thinking of serious uses for it. For example, we used to ship a product on DVD consisting of a database of images and video clips. Now we have replaced the whole database with some HTML pages, with embedded JavaScript to provide all the searching and sorting capabilities that used to require a heavyweight proprietary database run-time package.This book starts by explaining the whole language in detail; then there is a comprehensive reference section, a general index and an index of built-in classes, properties and methods. If you are completely new to programming, and unsure about variables, functions, statements, expressions or objects, then you might want to find a gentler introduction than this. But if you already have some familiarity with programming in general and a working knowledge of HTML and CSS, then this book will be all you ever need on the subject. (Marini's book on the Document Object Model might offer some extra detail on manipulating structured documents.) Comprehensive, well written and presented, good value.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A good reference., 8 Nov 2000
As usual with O'Reilly, the book does just what it says on the cover. I am not often called upon to write anything complex in Javascript: I can usually use existing code, server-side perl, or Java. But since buying this book, I found that when I have needed to do something in Javascript, the information has been here, to hand. Unfortunately, it can sometimes take a while to find if you are not used to the way objects are organised in Javascript, and indeed to the way the book is organised. I suspect if you read the whole book rather than just dipping into it as I do, you would get a whole lot more mileage out of it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Perfect Javascript Reference!, 12 Oct 2000
By A Customer
This book is a perfect reference for Javascript. It covers every necessary part of the Javascript language, and its statement & function reference section is perfect for looking up the syntax of a particular command, finding out variable names, checking which browsers a particular command is available in and more. This book is a Javascript programmers bible, always to hand to remind of of any command, syntax etc that you forget! Well worth it. Well done O'Reilly, another quality reference book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent reference (if you already know JavaScript), 26 Jun 2000
An excellent and comprehensive reference. Almost the definitive reference. I use this book almost every day at work. However I would not recommend it to anyone new to programming or JavaScript.
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