Reviews for JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook

1. A pleasure to read.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2009

   In web development, there are normally multiple ways of doing something. Most learning books tend to teach you one method. This book is far more enlightened though. Take the issue of sprite rollovers. Personally I prefer the CSS approach of handling them. This book shows you how to do it in both CSS and Javascript. Its up to you to decide which method you want to implement in any given situation.
   
   This book is more than a crash course in Javascript and DHTML. It is a crash course in getting your pages working properly. As stated before, CSS is covered too (not exhaustively, but they do acknowledge its existance and work with it, rather than dance around it). Ajax is covered too, again, though, from a practical, rather than an "all you need to know about Ajax" fashion.
   
   The recipes in the cookbook itself cover all aspects of web development. My personal favourite was Chapter 6: Managing Browser Windows. Using techniques described there, I was able to code my very own extremely lightweight lightbox clone. Why not just use Lightbox, you may ask? Well, the last version of Lightbox I used got knocked out by IE8. The developer no longer supported it, and it was a complete pain to get the code fixed. Now I have my own version which I can support ad nauseam.
   
   If you aren't bothered in learning languages and just want results, look at stuff like Lightbox and Scriptaculous etc. If you want to find out how to do it yourself, and how to do your own stuff, you need books like this.

2. All round package

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2008

   This book delivers a lot.
   
   It is uniquely difficult to get into client scripting because it draws on so many technologies; has been a battle ground for browser developers; and the development tools are so poor.
   
   I read(tried to read) loads of books on client side scripting but could not get the picture I needed to understand what is going on. They either each describe a single technology which is not, in itself, enough to get started with, or they describe such a big picture that there is no practical application for the knowledge.
   
   This book covers sufficient ground that a complete picture emerges but also links that picture to the practical details needed to get stuck in.
   
   As well as getting me going there was plenty of depth to and detail whenever I wanted it.
   
   I have always found that in each area there is one book which has provided the breakthrough. For client side scripting this has been that book.
   
   

3. Excellent Book if you need to learn Javascript quickly

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2005

   I don't normally write reviews but after reading this book I felt I had to spread the good word. The style and pace of this book is excellent if you are already a programmer and need to pick up javascript quickly. You'll need a more comprehensive Javascript book to ensure you cover all bases, but if you want to learn the basics and how to actually deliver results without having to wade through chapters of general theory of programming then this is the type of book for you.

4. Just the job

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2003

   I have been working on developing a web application now for about 6 months and just recently got this book. I only wish I had got hold of it 6 months ago. Looking through the table of contents it contains examples of nearly all the Javascript functionality that I have struggled to incorporate into our application. I would have saved loads of time and probably have coded things a lot more efficiently if I'd had this book first. Topics such as date validation, handling script errors, creating a new window, bringing a window to the front, changing the contents of one frame from another, resizing frames, setting frameset specifications dynamically, blocking submissions from the Enter Key, Advancing Text Field Focus with the Enter Key to name just a few! I've already used it since getting it to look up modal windows and creating tree-view structures.

   This is everything I expected that book to be.

   I heartily recommend this book. It has tons of highly usable examples.