The perennial bestseller returns with new details for using the latest tools and techniques available with JavaScript JavaScript is the definitive language for making the Web a dynamic, rich, interactive medium. This guide to JavaScript builds on the success of previous editions and introduces you to many new advances in JavaScript development. The reorganization of the chapters helps streamline your learning process while new examples provide you with updated JavaScript programming techniques. You'll get all-new coverage of Ajax for remote scripting, JavaScript frameworks, JavaScript and XML, and the latest features in modern Web browsers. Plus, all the featured code has been updated to ensure compliance with the most recent popular Web browsers. Continuing in the superlative tradition of the first three editions, Beginning JavaScript, Fourth Edition , gets you up to speed on all the new advances in JavaScript development.
The 4th edition feels very dated. Once you reach the point of accepting user data, the methods become a constant reminder of how much further along we are in web coding practices than we were in 2008. Plus the constant use of the HTML4 doctype dates this edition. I reached a point where I knew things were not good practice to follow and stopped reading. HTML in your JS feels dirty.
5th edition releases in March 2015. Hopefully this new edition will introduce current best practices.
I loved the format of this book - each example program is explained line by line (or block by block when that makes more sense). And the authors do this throughout the book! So when you get to later chapters, it's not assumed that you already know what's going on. Things are still explained in a clear, concise yet detailed, manner.
I decided to read this book, because I was looking for Javascript for starters, however I wasn't expecting a text for people with no exposure at all to software development. Despite of many boring chapters, explaining what programming actually is, I found there plenty of information that I was looking for. To summarize, it is a good introductory text to Javascript about both programming language and web development.
I always keep this book on my bookshelf for reference. I have never been a JavaScript fan but we all have to do it to get jobs done and this book has helped me out a lot over the years.