Reviews for Pro JavaScript RIA Techniques: Best Practices, Performance and Presentation

1. A must-have!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2010

   An extremely helpful guide with real examples which makes it possible for you as a reader to apply this on your own work, regardless of your own level of experience. There has clearly been a lot of thought behind the way the book is organised, and it is so much more pleasant to read than many other technical books. It is truly useful and not just another book standing around, but one you can take down from the shelf and actually get help from when you need it.
   I highly recommend reading it!

2. If I had a match I could but this book out of its misery

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2010

   When Doug Crockford says theat 'The Rhino' book is the best book in a collection of very bad JavaScript books he's taking about efforts like this. The author clearly knows very little about the prototypal nature of Javascript where functions as first class objects, and its origins in Self and Scheme. Some of the practices he advocates are so awful it make me want to set a match to this momument to ignorance. The remainder of the book is padded with meaningless guff on various subjects such as HTML and HTTP to no purpose.

3. Best book on my shelf

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

   I love this book. I have a shelf full of Apress & O'Reilly publications, and this is easily my favourite.
   
   It's a cleverly-organised mix of foundational and advanced material, and is very well written & accessible.
   
   The code samples are long, but real-world examples (so much more useful than the foo.bar.baz type samples you see in other books).
   
   As noted by other reviewers, Odell provides the source code for a complete JS library, and uses it (and its creation) very effectively to demonstrate the Javascript RIA principles he is demonstrating.
   
   There is still surprisingly little documentation on the development of Web Applications; this book is an absolute must-have for anyone venturing down that route.

4. Excellent for both theory and real-world solutions

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

   Very impressive. This is one of very few books on Javascript that manages to clearly explain JS theory without becoming either overly technical or 'dumbed-down'.
   
   The custom library which is developed throughout the book is particularly well thought out and provides a very useful starting point for real-world projects once you've completed it.
   
   I was also pleased to see a strong emphasis on progressive enhancement, and I found the chapter on performance tweaking particularly useful.
   
   It does cover a lot of ground, providing enough detail to be useful to more advanced developers, yet with enough clarity to provide a very solid grounding to those who are in the early stages of learning about (web) application development. The author has a clear narrative style which, whilst still being informative, is refreshingly easy-to-read compared to many programming books.
   
   Highly recommended.

5. Brilliant

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

   Absolutely brilliant book. Really clearly organised and laid out. If you can only read one book about the subject then make this the book.