The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition: A Practical Guide to Interactive Web Pages by Dave Thau!

Product Description

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.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #238032 in Books
Published on: 2006-12-15
Format: Illustrated
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
528 pages
Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
With JavaScript, you can add interactivity, animation, and other tricks to your web pages quickly. But this isn't just a book of scripts for you to cut and paste into your HTML, only to find out later that nothing works as you'd expected. Using real-world examples as the starting point, author thau! walks you step by step through various scripts and explains how they produce the effects you want.

Because no discussion of JavaScript today is complete without coverage of Ajax, this thoroughly updated second edition includes new chapters on Ajax, so you can get up to speed with this valuable method for creating truly dynamic web pages. This second edition of the best-selling The Book of JavaScript also features revised appendices and new examples throughout to reflect today's web environment. Inside, you'll learn to:

* Work with frames, forms, cookies, and alarms
* Use events to react to a user's actions
* Perform image swaps and rollovers
* Program your own functions to produce customized solutions
* Store user preferences and build a shopping cart
* Use Dynamic HTML to turn web pages into multimedia applications

If you need to spruce up tired-looking pages, The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition will help take your site from bland to brilliant.

BONUS: Includes a complete reference to all JavaScript objects and functions, including examples, properties, methods, handlers, and browser compatibility!


About the Author
Thau! has been creating Internet applications since 1993, starting with bianca.com, the first web-based community on the Internet. He was Director of Software Engineering and Senior Scientist at Wired Digital, and has taught programming languages to hundreds of artists, engineers, and children. He is currently creating data sharing platforms for people studying biodiversity and working towards a PhD degree in computer science at UC Davis.
Customer Reviews

THE Book to get if you want to learn Javascript quickly
I looked at this book, the Visual QuickStart Book (Negrino/Smith), and the Dummies book (Vander Veer). I also looked at a couple of other basic books. This is by the far the best. This one will get you up and running doing some basic, though nifty, Javascript tasks. And it is very well written.

It was better organized than the Dummies book, and much more clear than the Visual Quickstart Guide. It was also more advanced than books like 'Javascript Demystified' or the Sam's Teach Yourself. The only bad thing I could say about the book is that it is a bit wordy at points.

If you need to do more advanced stuff, you can get one of the more advanced books.


Well-Written, Sane Examples and Fun to Read
If you want to learn Javascript, this is an excellent book. It's a good read. Even though thau is an internet god, there's no ego in this book. It's clear he only wants to share his knowledge and bring more people into the web development fold.

I hope he's getting rich.

If you're more advanced this book is not for you...
I bought this book becuase I read several reviews that stated this book would be great for those who are more advanced in scripting as well as the beginner. I did not find that to be the case. The one good thing I will say is that it was clear and easy to read, so if you're new to the world of JS, this book will suit your needs.