Pro JavaScript Techniques
by John Resig
List Price:
Our Price: $28.46
You Save: $16.53 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $18.00 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: John ResigEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-13
ISBN: 1590597273
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Apress
Accessories:
- Pro C# with .NET 3.0, Special Edition (Expert's Voice in .NET)
- Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005 (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint)
- Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Book Reviews of Pro JavaScript Techniques
Book Review: excellent for the at least moderately experienced
Summary: 5 Stars
As a javascript dabbler, I was looking for a book aimed at someone already familiar with javascript and found this one. Having read a few apress books, I felt pretty confident that the quality of this one would be at least reasonable and I definitely wasn't let down.
The executive overview is that this is an excellent book for those who are already working in javascript and are looking to improve their game. It covers a world of techniques very well. Highly recommended.
Now, the longer review...
This is an excellent book that deftly avoids the pitfalls so many books that claim to be aimed at people familiar with the topic. So many of these types of books try to be accessible they end up giving a lot of basic information mixed in with the advanced information - ultimately becoming a text unsatisfying for people of any level. This book devotes the beginning 15% of pages going over the basics, but it covers a ton of ground by acting more as a refresher course - assuming at least basic familiarity with most of the topics. I think it really did a great job of this, starting in Chapter 1 with a broad overview of OO javascript, cross browser issues, being serious and rigorous with your development process and their particular views on how to deploy javascript unobtrusively.
The subsequent 3 chapters are the refresher course. These chapters work through a ton of topics, at times it refers you to sites on the net for further information. He starts the overview with pretty much every topic in OO development, from scope and closures to a remarkably sweet and concise description of context. He brings together all these topics and how together they form the building blocks for javascripts particular flavor of OO. Then he tackles the various ways to deal with inheritance - here he covers ways to do it yourself as well as a couple libraries that you can use. He also talks about packaging and ways to make your code play well with others. He wraps up the overview with a chapter about debugging and testing - a topic I think a bit under-discuessed in javascript and I was happy to get his views and suggestions on how to deal with these.
With those conveniently out of the way he dives right into several chapters where he talks about the DOM, events and css scripting and how they relate to his goal of creating unobtrusive scripts where no javascript intrudes on nice clean html. He covers these topics by presenting a small problem and working through the code to solve that problem. It's very easy to follow and works well. He introduces several libraries to help with the process, but is careful always to explain the fundamentals of how things are actually working under the hood. Too many books that start working with libraries gloss over what's actually happening and wind up being little more than extra documentation for the libraries, fortunately this book doesn't suffer from this problem.
He then goes into two more chapters bringing it all together with larger in depth projects, enhancing forms with validation and other features as well as a javascript image gallery.
The last major part covers Ajax - one chapter goes into nice detail and builds several helpful library functions. He also covers handling the return of these requests and the pros/cons of xml vs html vs json. And then it goes into two bigger projects enhanced blogs, autocomplete and wiki.
Finally, he talks a little about where javascripts going and provides some references for DOM, events and browsers in the appendix.
There's not much negative to say about this. It gives a great overview for those who don't know the language inside and out, it covers a huge number of topics in a very readable and instructive way and gives a very useful reference to DOM and event scripting at the end. It does suffer slightly from putting some code in that is unexplained until a future point in the book. But, it doesn't happen often.
Summary of Pro JavaScript Techniques
Pro JavaScript Techniques is the ultimate JavaScript book for the modern web developer. It provides everything you need to know about modern JavaScript, and shows what JavaScript can do for your web sites. This book doesn't waste any time looking at things you already know, like basic syntax and structures.
Expert web developer and author John Resig concentrates on fundamental, vital topics?what modern JavaScripting is (and isnt), the current state of browser support, and pitfalls to be wary of. The book is organized into four sections:
- Modern JavaScript development using JavaScript the object-oriented way, creating reusable code, plus testing and debugging
- DOM scripting updating content and styles, plus events, and effect and event libraries
- How Ajax works, overcoming problems, and using libraries to speed up development of Ajax applications
- The future of JavaScript looking at cutting edge topics like JSON, HTML5, and more
All concepts are backed up by real-world examples and case studies, and John provides numerous reusable functions and classes to save you time in your development. There are also up-to-date reference appendixes for the DOM, events, browser support (including IE7), and frameworks, so you can look up specific details quickly and easily.
Languages & Tools Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Languages & Tools Books
Eclipse Plug-ins (3rd Edition)by Eric Clayberg, Dan Rubel
Addison-Wesley Professional; Published: 2008-12-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $38.33
Price in other shops:
Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design (6th Edition)by John Lewis, William Loftus
Addison Wesley; Published: 2008-03-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $74.40
Price in other shops:
C++ Primer (3rd Edition)by Stanley B. Lippman, Josée Lajoie
Addison-Wesley Professional; Published: 1998-04-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.47
Price in other shops:
Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Exampleby Andrew Koenig, Barbara E. Moo
Addison-Wesley Professional; Published: 2000-08-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $26.99
Price in other shops:
Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Communityby Richard P. Gabriel
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1998-05-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $64.55
Just Java? 2 (6th Edition)by Peter van der Linden
Prentice Hall; Published: 2004-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $35.00
Price in other shops:
UML for Java? Programmersby Robert C. Martin
Prentice Hall; Published: 2003-06-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.99
Price in other shops:
Thinking in Java (3rd Edition) (One-Off)by Bruce Eckel
Prentice Hall PTR; Published: 2002-12-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.80
Price in other shops:
SQL Fundamentals with CDROMby John J. Patrick
Prentice Hall; Published: 1999-05-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.00
Price in other shops:
C How to Program, 2nd Editionby Paul J. Deitel
Prentice Hall; Published: 1994-01-13; Textbook Binding; Book
Best price: $25.84
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programmingby Marijn Haverbeke
No Starch Press; Published: 2011-02-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.99
Price in other shops:
The Book of CSS3: A Developer's Guide to the Future of Web Designby Peter Gasston
No Starch Press; Published: 2011-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.47
Price in other shops:
JavaScript Web Applicationsby Alex MacCaw
O'Reilly Media; Published: 2011-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.88
Price in other shops:
jQuery in Action, Second Editionby Bear Bibeault, Yehuda Katz
Manning Publications; Published: 2010-07-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.95
Price in other shops:
High Performance JavaScript (Build Faster Web Application Interfaces)by Nicholas C. Zakas
Yahoo Press; Published: 2010-03-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.50
Price in other shops:
Pro JavaScript Design Patterns (Recipes: a Problem-Solution Ap)by Dustin Diaz, Ross Harmes
Apress; Published: 2007-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.84
Price in other shops:
Secrets of the JavaScript Ninjaby John Resig, Bear Bibeault
Manning Publications; Published: 2012-03-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.10
Price in other shops:
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages (Definitive Guides)by David Flanagan
O'Reilly Media; Published: 2011-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $30.00
Price in other shops:
JavaScript Patternsby Stoyan Stefanov
O'Reilly Media; Published: 2010-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.00
Price in other shops:
JavaScript: The Good Partsby Douglas Crockford
Yahoo Press; Published: 2008-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.55
Price in other shops: