I thought this book was great. It gives a quick enough overview to keep the attention of a student or professional. This book is not going to be a reference manual, but it is good enough to teach you the basics so you can get a feel for the language, what it does, and put it on your resume.

I see that there are readers of this book that are a little upset that they were unable to use this book as a learning tool, but as a reference, this book can't be beat.

As the title states, it is for Web Professionals. If you are just learning, I reccomend that you start small and work up to this book, you won't be sorry.

I see that there are readers of this book that are a little upset that they were unable to use this book as a learning tool, but as a reference, this book can't be beat.

As the title states, it is for Web Professionals. If you are just learning, I reccomend that you start small and work up to this book, you won't be sorry.

If you want a book that awakes your worst instincts, just buy it. Hundreds of lines to explain how a while loop works and minimalist info on Javascript itself. Full of bad jokes about a bad taste "virtual boss" obsessed with adding stupid goodies to your pages.

I picked up this book looking for a JavaScript book to use in the classroom. I'm still looking. The authors start with code without giving a good overview of the syntax. I found very little useful content in the 169 pages. Unless you are coding by hand, most of the routines are easily generated with a tool like ColdFusion.

The book begins by diving straight into the examples, without so much as a brief discussion of syntax. I found the example code was usually full of errors. It is not useful as a reference or a learning aid. I bought this book in London to read during the flight home. Next time I go back, I'm going to attempt to return it. Avoid the "Essential XYZ For Web Professionals" series like the plauge (or British Beef).

I chose to buy this book because I liked the concept of having a book which was supposed to be "essential" for the real Webmaster world. However, I find (I'm still struggling through) myself wasting time on trying to figure out all the coding mistakes. The mistakes start in chapter 1. The zip files which you download off the net (which contain the code for the projects mentioned throughout the book) are also done in a poor manner, the book does not refer you to a certain file. Another example is that you have to figure out where to move the images files in order to have them sourced correctly to the images. I would not recommend this book until a new corrected, updated edition with CD will be available.

I liked the start of the book. You have just been hired to improve the web site for Shelly Biotechnologies..... The book contains a series of assignments or projects you solve. I don't see how a beginner can understand any of yet. I am professional programmer looking for teaching material for a JavaScript class. If I selected this book I would have had to teach a lot of programming concepts because the authors left it all out or didn't cover it in sufficient detail. I also agree with the folks about the numerous errors. I also question the programming expertise of the authors. I saw some unneccesary consructs that grated on my programming nerves (how could they miss it? do they really know how to program?) If they meant to produce a "copy and paste" approach to JavaScript. By this I mean, copy and paste this into your HTML make the required changes for your images or objects and don't worry about understanding anything. They failed. If it was meant to teach PROGRAMMING Javascript, they failed. If it was meant to familiarize a professional programmer with Javascript, they failed here too. So what was the point? I instruct my students to first "identify your audience", these authors should have done the same! I do not recommend this book. Check out the book "Internet & World Wide Web, How to Program" by Deitel. It is my selection as a JavaScript text. This book is not on my supplemental recommendation list.

This book was of little help. When I look up code samples, I would like to see the whole thing. They write one line, explain it, write another line, explain it, but never quite put it all together in a manner that is easily duplicated. In particular, I needed to validate phone numbers, their example broke the phone number out into a separate box for area code to validate. How does that help me for international phone numbers?

Some of the hardest things to find in life are people who hate pizza, short lines and good Java books. This book is nothing short of a waist of time if you are not experienced with Javascript. The examples in this book are consistantly flawed with mistakes that would make any programmer want to slap the editor. There is no resource for accessing the scripts from the web like in the other essential books, leaving you to figure out how the hell to get the script working because the example they gave you is erroring all over the place. The only way I could recommend this book would be if you were looking for ideas on how to program. It gives some interesting concepts of how to accomplish some neet things with Javascript. It might make a good companion for study but I would keep a dish of holy water and some salt nearby, you'll need it. Other than that stay away from this book, I wouldn't wish this catastrophy on my worst enemy...well maybe.

No way would I turn in code with as many errors as I found in the examples from this book. The approach to learning Javascript is good, it's just not backed up with any decent examples or exercises. Not recommended.