For me JavaScript in the book's title is somehow misleading. This is because usually, in web applications along with JavaScript, take part also HTML and CSS. Thought JavaScript exists in contents it is observed as a building block of some libraries, like jQuery, Node.js (to mention more popular).
If one is interested in JavaScript itself this is not the right book. If it is interested in JavaScript based technologies (patters, libraries, etc.) involved in today web applications this might be a book of interest.
Goes for breadth over depth; it presents a hodge-podge of ideas and lacks the polish and consistency that (usually well-edited) O'Reilly books have. However I do like that it assumes that the reader is already fairly adept with JavaScript.
Great book!, It teach you how to build an Javascript Web Applications with barebones, without frameworks, for later use frameworks, which is great, because in this way you can learn how an MVC frameworks.
This is a well-written book with good advice. It was published just before frameworks like Bootstrap, React, and Angular became popular. Those frameworks implement much of the advice from this book, but they do so in a way that means the programmer can largely ignore the details.
So (1) this book was ahead of its time; and (2) the world has moved on and JavaScript Web Applications is now a little dated. Even so, it's still a worthwhile read.
Love this book - I have a background in Flex and all I really care about here is how and why to structure a javascript application and some background into some of the architectural decisions that were made along the way. After reading this book, I had a really nice background on many of the common JS MVC frameworks (aka...the way of the future). While the "Bible" aka "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" seems to be very popular, I liked this book much more as a resource.
Young author gets reader through process of making lightweight MVC framework and give insights on different modern tricks/tools/frameworks/specs. Very good read. Book is also quite short (~280 pages with appendixes), which makes it even better.
I loved that it's a short book. Unfortunately it's a bit too broad for it's size. it's still a good introduction on how Javascript client-side frameworks are put together and used. It should make reading the actual source of backbone or some other library easier during day to day development.