This book reads like it was slapped together from a small handful of quick notes. Actually, I would think someone could make better notes than that. The disc does not contain the example codes the book says it does. It's a rather expensive way to waste your time in an attempt to learn something. The explanations are weak and much too brief for a beginner or even someone with programming experience. I thought it would be a fun way to get started before I moved on to more advanced books, but it is incomprehensible and a great frustration to read. Buyer beware, and notice how poorly this book has been rated.

Javascript for dummies, by Emily Van der Veer, is not up to the reputation of clarity, simplicity and usefulness of the books in the "For Dummies" collection. The explanations of the basic concepts of the language (primary datatypes, objects, arrays, functions, properties, methods, etc.) are garbled and confusing. The examples are badly selected, they don't go step by step, they mix trite and complex elements, and do not really explain things. This book will delay by several years, as it did for me, your understanding of Javascript. I finally understood and began to be able to use the language after having read "Javascript, the definitive guide" by David Flanagan.

This book is good for a quick introduction to JavaScript. There's lots of general tricks and techniques, plenty of ideas, and code snippets to reuse (on the CD). However, the descriptions of HOW the code worked I found lacking. There were various details about exactly WHAT the Js interpreter was doing to parse the code. The book left me feeling that I had lots of great ideas, but that when I sat down to apply them and make something original--there'd be lots of bugs based on details that I wasn't told about. Good starter, good reference--definitely not "text-book" quality--but it was fun to play with.

I've been learning and using JavaScript for quite some time, and of all of the books I've used, this one has by far been the worst. The examples that the author uses are not very helpful, and often concepts are poorly explained. A lot of the code you will need to write will require you to creatively use the skills you've acquired to solve a problem; this book, however, likely won't equip you with the tools you need to be able to do this. If you're looking for a good place to start, I'd start with JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan. It does have flaws of its own, but it is a good place to start.

I have several complaints about this book. Firstly, the author assumes you don't even know how to turn on a computer. Who would be bothering to learn about JavaScript if they don't even know how to power up a PC? Come on! The author should spend less time detailing the basic boot up process on the PC and how to open your text editor, and more time explaining the way JavaScript works, and how it depends on the browser that the person visiting your website is using to work correctly. Also, a lot of the examples given in this book don't work. (Unfortunately, I've found that is common with JavaScript books.) Also, the book seems to waste a lot of time going on and on about useless nonsense. I know it's a "dummies" book, but this book expects its readers to truly be morons.

I'm only thankful I purchased the book at a discount bookstore for only $3.99.

I bought this book with a basic knowledge of HTML but very little knowledge of Javascript. Being a fan of other "Dummies" books, I thought this would be a great place to start learning Javascript. Do I feel ripped off! In the Introduction, the author states the book is for those with little or no knowledge of Javascript, which I don't think at all to be the case. She claims to use "real-world examples", most of which I find to be fairly abstract and very poorly explained. She also claims that all the sample codes are contained on the CD-ROM, which is a flat out lie, the applications are similar but the coding is very different from the book, which combined with the author's hard-to-follow explanations leaves the reader very confused and frustrated. On top of all that there are several typos, one of which refering to Microsoft Windows as a word processing program, and poorly written HTML, missing several tags. The author definately knows Javascript, but how good she is as an author is questionable.

Not to sound trite, but this book was written by Dummies.... the examples are not true to life, there are too many mistakes and the explaination of JavaScript is too complicated and overblown.

Not to sound trite, but this book was written by Dummies.... the examples are not true to life, there are too many mistakes and the explaination of JavaScript is too complicated and overblown.

My general rule of the thumb is to avoid books that blatantly insult my intelligence in the title. However, I decided to give "JavaScript for Dummies" a try.

The thought of teaching an object oriented programming language to a "dummie" is laughable. However, JS for Dum-Dums certainly tries, but Ms.Vander Veer needs some help in the "dummies" part. Much of what the book is based on assumes that you understand programming terms (parsing, methods, global variables, the purpose of curly braces } ).The book itself starts off good, but it just doesn't pull through. It introduces everything you'll need to write good *SIMPLE* JavaScripts. There's nothing really to say that hasn't been said in previous reviews. Despite what you may have heard, you need more than just HTML under your belt to get the full benefit from this book. Repeat, knowing HTML is not enough.

Many "advanced topics" are left out in the cold, such as JavaScript's excellent implementation of regular expressions, arrays and zIndexing for dynamic effects. The explanation of Netscape and IE DOMs are shoddy at best, and the object-method reference in the back of the book needs to go back in the oven for a few more minutes. Throughout the book, you'll learn a handful of principles and see them applied through "real life" scripts. Often these examples are cute "look-what-I-can-do" scripts circa 1996. This, of course, is utterly useless. No one wants to know how to construct a poem generator in JS, save for maybe the weekend hobbyist.

Ms.Vander-Veer's style of "nevermind if you don't understand / the example will reveal all" is cumbersome. Often, the example scripts are archane and overcomplicated. This will only further frustrate the newbie. Ms.Vander-Veer's literary atrocity is the case of a weekend hobbyist gone bad. Whoever told her to write a book on something she obviously has little experience in should be shot. While she explains that this is not a book for hardcore programmers (who should check out O'reilly's "JavaScript : The Definitive Guide") she does say that you will be writing professional-grade scripts by the end of the book. Only covering a handful of the avalaible objects to JScript developers only adds insult to injury.

Yet, this book still has some redeeming qualities. If you've got some experience with BASIC or another relatively simple programming language, this book might be of some use as an intro. However, it is supremely insufficient as a stand-alone reference and will have you scrambling to online references frequently.

In the end, "JavaScript For Dummies" is a book that chokes on it's own mediocrity, which is glaringly obvious from the hind-side perspective of a semi-seasoned JavaScript programmmer.

I just purchased "JavaScript for Dummies" and immediately became lost after Chapter 2. The author is horrible at teaching this language. Fortunately, I have a friend who is a VBasic programmer and helped me through parts of it. But I give up - I'm going to search for another JavaScript manual. This one is the pits and I am very, very, VERY disappointed that "For Dummies" even published this book! I have a deep urge to slap the tar out of the author.

This book is not only what taught me JavaScript, but computer programming as well. I continue to refer to this book today, years after I first read it. It has an amazing compilation of information, really simple to understand as are all dummies books that I've read.

This book is not only what taught me JavaScript, but computer programming as well. I continue to refer to this book today, years after I first read it. It has an amazing compilation of information, really simple to understand as are all dummies books that I've read.

Once upon a time the "For Dummies" series stood alone as the only name brand instructional company in the world. However, like most great ideas, variations of the same concept were adopted. In the case of internet lingo, O'Reilly's and The Complete Idiot's guides were created.

I have read both the O'Reilly and the For Dummies book, and after completing both of them (I am an advanced J-Script user), I found the O'Reilly book, although not geared specifically towards beginners, as the more instructional book. It gives typical O'Reilly plans and lessons that will guide you to being an earnest Java Script writer.

The main problem with the For Dummies book is its lack of direction for the overall web constructor. The author advertises Java Script as the ideal programming language, and in doing so has written chapters on how to do things in this language which I, and many other professional web designers feel should not be done.

Therefore, keep yourself away from this book until you have read a truly introductory book, as well as a book like O'Reillys... after that you should DEFINETLY buy this book as a reference because of the vast amount of intermeddiate knowledge it has.

This book doesn't teach you, it just tells you. I bought this book thinking I would learn something. All I learned was some of things Javascript can do. Also, another negative note, she adds a lot of unnecessary (unappreciated; for that matter) blah! Not recommended.

When I first encountered JavaScript as part of a CIW certification course I was intrigued - programming all the nifty things you can do on websites. I had an excellent learning experience with A+ Certification for Dummies (which is all you really need for A+), so I had high hopes of learning Javascript from the same publishers. Doh.

This book promises to teach you all the tricks of doing the important interactive things on a contemporary website: form validation, rollovers, frames, etc. What it delivers is page upon page of unintelligible code (for the newbie)interspersed with vague hints about programming ideas. Core concepts and syntax of programming are treated as an afterthought. There are no exercises to work through, even if the concepts were there, so it's very, very difficult to learn anything in depth. In addition, there's very little reference material; this book isn't worth the time.

As an alternative, I suggest Pollock's book (on this site somewhere) The topics he covers are not flashy (rollovers don;t get covered until 2/3rds through the book) but it teaches concepts thoroughly using simple illustrative exercises. I'm about half way through this book and it's already helping me learn ActionScript (the OOP language built into Flash 5.0. Highly recommended.

I agree with the folks who say this isn't really a bad book, but it is misleadingly titled. If you have experience with object oriented programming languages like Visual Basic you will be able to learn some things about javascript with it. If not, you will be lost. Very little time is spent on the basics, and what there is isn't very good.

An example: at the start of the chapter introducing objects, the author begins with a somewhat complicated example(for a beginner) involving "this" referances without explaining how "this" works, several objects that are contained within other objects, and two functions. The code used to illustrate these ideas consists of a few brief lines, without much context or explanation. Further confusing things is the author's habit of refering to everything as an object, from functions to properties, and this after an analogy comparing an object to a noun.

Very confusing. You just have all these terms and concepts dumped on you at once, and all of it barely explained in a few brief pages. A more experienced programmer will be able to sort through it all and figure out what is happening. Anyone else will be absolutely lost.