After walking you through the most basic aspects of the language (including how it relates to various browsers) and guiding you through a "Hello, World" example, Holzner explains operators and control structures and details the most popular and useful objects one by one. He devotes large sections to the Form, Image, Document, Window, Navigator, Location, and History objects.

This book differentiates itself from other JavaScript tutorials through its discussion of JavaScript animation, an area that has received little coverage. Holzner shows how to do animation both with and without using the Layer object (based on HTML 4.0). You'll also find unusually comprehensive coverage of LiveConnect's ability to link JavaScript and Java. An accompanying CD-ROM holds code examples discussed in the book.

One potentially cool feature that suffers from poor implementation is an appendix that lists all the keywords, properties, and methods of JavaScript and indicates which are supported by which browser. Unfortunately, the author lists browsers as "Netscape Navigator" and "Microsoft Internet Explorer," making no mention of the various versions. Therefore, when the table says that Internet Explorer supports the Image object, it is misleading. (Only Internet Explorer 4.0 and later versions of the browser support the Image object.) --David Wall