This book is as the cover states; "Visual QuickStart Guide....pictures rather than lengthy explanations." It was a great help in getting started with JavaScript. It is not an in-depth tutorial, but then, it doesn't claim to be.

I liked it.

Bo

It's downloads don't work, and the book requires that they be used.
the examples will not run as written in the book.
They do not conform to the w3schools standards.
it cannot be used outside Microsoft products.
Like Firefox.

This book was well packaged for delivery. I like it for the clarity with which the authors present the various lessons.

I hope to derive a lot from it and to add to my skills.

I am still going through it and so far it has been very exciting. Thank you for the good business. A value for the money.

This is useful as a reference book or to learn JavaScript. I do not use it often, but when I need it I am very glad to have it on my shelf. Good examples.

The authors are not very good at explaining things, even relatively simple things such as the prompt() method or the dot syntax. It could be much clearer and they could do it with fewer words. The authors take a rambling tone that doesn't quite give you the information you need. You can't depend on the authors to give you meaningful explanations. You have to experiment and try different things.
It's possible to learn JavaScript with this book, but it will take much more time than is necessary. In five editions, why couldn't they have improved this book? What are they doing? Other Visual Quickstart Guides are the same way. I hope the Visual Quickstart Guides go out of business and some other company takes over the market share. They've been cavalier toward their customers and don't deserve to be in business much longer.
Other books like JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by Flanagan, and JavaScript: The Complete Reference by Powell and Schneider are better at explaining the language even though they are considered to be more advanced books.
The same authors have published JavaScript & AJAX for the Web, which has almost the exact same content only it has a couple of AJAX chapters thrown in. Check out the review by another customer (at this point it is the only review). His critique is very similar to this one.
On the positive side, the authors manage to get most of the information across and the content is relevant for the majority of users.
If you choose to buy this book, use it as more of a guide and do not depend on it. Purchase other books to supplement it.

Believe it or not, this book is an acutal textbook for a course I am taking in college. I was hoping for a book better than this for a college course.

I have used QuickStart books for a number of years to get into/get started with new technology and software, and they have consistantly impressed. This book keeps up the tradition. I highly recommend it. A great resource for anyone getting into, or improving their knowledge of JavaScript. Go buy it, you won't be sorry.

I am one of the most impatient programmers on the face of the earth. In fact, I have been in professional services for years because it takes to long to realize results with traditional programming. Web development has sucked me back into the fray, and I enjoy the immediacy of the langugages involved. Code it -- look at it! Works perfectly for me! However, I am now a senior analyst, and nothing in my job description calls for these skills.

As the new director of technology (website guru) for my professional association, I found myself at a loss. I know HTML, and a smattering of java, but knew nothing about PHP, CSS, real JAVA programming or MySQL, which are the basis for our group's website. I took over in January of 2006, with a major symposium scheduled for March 2006. Everything and it's grandmother needed to be released on that site, which had been neglected over the past year (the old DOT was sent to Iraq!). In short order, I needed to know it all and do it all. This same review will be used for the Java and PHP/MySQL books. THESE BOOKS ARE A LIFESAVER! From building forms in HTML (I had never had to do this before), to creating style sheets, to writing java code to manipulating the MySQL database with PHP files, I have found the instructions so clear and easy to use that when I am in a hurry, I can just do stuff. Later, I can go back to the book to understand what I did, how it was actually done, and why it was successfully. When I really take my time, the tutorials are invaluable.

Obviously, I recommend this book. Novices will be led gently by the hand; the more experienced will find better ways of doiing things, and the impatient can get it done quickly. Excellent deal.

I had no trouble with this transaction. The book arrived in new condition ahead of scheduled arrival time. Thanks.

The only reason I chose this book was because of the price, and I guess you get what you pay for.

This book is for beginners, but it is still extremely elementary. The amount of interesting information is very limited. It covers the basic elements and tricks with Javascript, but nothing with much depth or significance. The book is littered with empty columns, and extraneously repetitive HTML code in examples.

Even for beginner, the example codes - while providing simple functionalities - look more complex than they need to be. Things that can be comfortably coded on one line gets expanded into its own function doing more than it really needs.

That said, for absolute beginner, this can be a non-intimidating starter guidebook, but be prepared to get another book to do anything more than superficial Javascripting. Things it does cover include syntax, image rollovers, form validation and regex, and some DHTML.

Ultimately, where this book lost two stars is in its failure as a referenceable book. It is simply much too difficult to find things you need inside the book. Even if you know what you want to do, and you are in need of a particular line of code, you will have to leaf through pages of stuff.

It does have a redeeming feature, which is a pretty complete table on Javascript objects. It also has a 7 page CSS2 reference.

Javascript can get very tricky and complex fast. I'm getting another book.

The material is covered using examples which are often too printed to small to read. Also, the DOM (Document Object Model) which is the core for using Javascript professionally is all but ignored.

Another great Visual QuickStart book by Peach Press! I bought this book because it's required for my JavaScript class, but it's a book I would have bought anyway. I'm glad the teacher chose this book to use. Very user friendly, easy to find what you're looking for, new code is colored so you can easily follow along. And of course, all the codes are on their website to download, along with other help. The authors have done a wonderful job of explaining JavaScript. This book is great for beginners or the more experienced. You definitely get more than your money's worth with this one! Don't hesitate to buy it!

This is a great learning or reference book. I used this book in the begining to learn some of the Javascript basics... and I still use this book as reference now.

This book might be a disappointment to some people who are looking for a thorough introduction to this scripting language. However, if you have a learning style where you can learn and catch a pattern by doing rather than reading in abstract, then this book will definitely will get you up and running in a jiff. The authors write decently and are consistent throughout this primer. The companion site, though, should be updated and should be redesigned, in my opinion. Of course, after you "master" this book, you SHOULD get a more thorough, abstract book where you can actually learn the intricacies and the inner works of this very powerful client-side scripting language without having to worry that you won't be able to apply it.

If, as I did, you have an older version of this book, it's time to upgrade. The fifth edition is significantly expanded over previous editions. Recommended.

I needed a quick brushup on Javascript that I had learned (and barely understood) four years ago. This book is great. I consider myself a novice so I felt so confident after reading it. I don't understand why the person above said the scripts don't work. I went to the very simple website and copied the scripts to Dreamweaver and they work just fine as long as I have the supporting files.

Great Book!

If you know basic HTML, and want to get a start on JavaScript, this is absolutely the best book to get. It leads you gently through the basics, providing lots of useful and thoroughly explained example scripts. I've used this book to teach non-programmers, humanities students who were building web pages for their classes, and it really works. Smith and Negrino are not just good programmers, they're good writers and teachers, and they keep the companion web site up to date. Their book is a fabulous foundation for JavaScript, and you can start using JavaScript almost immediately, even if you only use their example scripts. They're also unusual, as JavaScript book authors, in that they teach good scripting habits, as well as the usual nuts and bolts.

It seems to me that most of these scripts don't work. I'm in IT and also a web site administrator, and I still can't get them to work as they are written. I give the authors a 3 for being motivated enough to write the book, though. It seems that they have good intentions.

I maintain content for a corporate extranet. I have often implemented JavaScript scripts and made some modifications. However, I had never really understood how the scripts worked. I got this book and "Beginning JavaScript" by Paul Wilton, so I could learn the nuts and bolts. After reading this I started to actually understand the scripts I was implementing. I recommend that beginners start by reading the Visual Quickstart (VQ) book and then move onto something more indepth like Wilton's book. VQ is an excellent concise introduction to the basics of JavaScript. It gives a quick explanation of things such as event handlers, methods, properties, functions and loops. You should be able to finish this book in a couple of weeks and have a solid understanding of the basics of JavaScript. However, you will then need something more indepth to truly learn to program complex JavaScripts.

I have two other Javascript books and have used on-line resources from time to time. I found this fifth edition to be a worthy addition. It isn't intended to be the ultimate comprehensive book, nor does it target the advanced scripter who wants the latest in tips and tricks. As it says in the introduction, the authors "concentrate on showing you how to get useful tasks done with JavaScript without a lot of extraneous information." The "Where to Learn More" section directs you to an excellent sampling of on-line resources that more than adequately addresses what you might find lacking in this book.

There are lots of practical examples and there is a companion site on-line where you can check out the examples and access the code for copy and pasting.

Since there are so many different ways to do things with JavaScript, you may or may not like the choices the authors make in the examples but you can't go far wrong imitating their style.

The language is clear and easy for me to understand, which really helps.

Javascript can be really frustrating compared to some other languages because there is zero tolerance for error and the error messages generated are of such little help in identifying the problem. The tips this book offers on debugging are worth way more than the price of the book!

I have to agree with Robert from Philly above -- this book is good for copying code that you need for your site but NOT for teaching you how to use JavaScript, despite the fact that the front cover claims that you can "teach yourself JavaScript the quick and easy way!... You'll be up and running in no time!" Well, you cannot teach yourself JavaScript with any depth of understanding with this book and the only way you can be "up and running" is by copying their code into your HTML document. Right at the beginning of the text there is a brief section (5 pages) describing what objects, properties, methods, event handlers, and variables/values are, but then the text jumps right into complex code for specific functions with general explanations of the details and barely any explanation of the syntax, as if the authors just EXPECT that you will want to copy the code for your own personal use instead of understand it. I was very, very disappointed in this book that was recommended to me by a JavaScript teacher.

JavaScript for the World Wide Web does not offer anything extraordinary in regards to the JavaScript (ECMAScript) language. This book focuses on simple web tricks that are simply out of season for modern web design and programming. There is hardly, if at all, coverage of programming with modern browsers like IE6, Opera 7, and Mozilla and with web standards from W3C, nor is there mention of non-web programming usages of JavaScript (ECMAScript) like for .NET, Acrobat, Flash.

So if you want to do little web tricks that was popular with Netscape 3 and Netscape 4 from almost a decade ago (frames, forms, images, etc.), then this book is for you. If you want to program for modern applications including modern web browsers, then you'll have to look elsewhere as this book is a waste of time, even it was for free.

Most books on JavaScript are packed with examples of how to do several simple tasks. Kinda like a cookbook; you can make several different individual items, but there's very little or no guidance at all on how to make a nice dinner or meal made up of several items that blend nicely. Or, more importantly, no explanation of *why* certain items should go together and others should not.

An average teacher shows you "how" to do it; a great teacher tells you "why" it's done that way.

"JavaScript For The World Wide Web" tells you "why" JavaScript works the way it does, and points you to several web sites that further clearly explain it's finer points.
The examples are very informative and cover a wide range of situations and techniques.
Each chapter is full of easy to understand examples, and the appendix that covers the JavaScript object table is a gold mine
all by itself.

The best part about this book is that you are shown how to write cross-broswer compliant JavaScript that isn't huge and confusing.

This book is so important to me that I keep it next to my PC, right beside my O'Reilly JavaScript book (the one with the rhino on the cover).

If you have never programmed a line of code in your life, this book will help get you started.

Don't be afraid of writing code that won't work; there's lots of places on the WWW that are full of experienced programmers willing to help.

This book is great place to start. :)

If you want to just copy code from the book and paste it on your websites, this is the book for you. In which case, you may as well download JavaScripts from some website. It does have line-by-line explanations for the scripts, but the explanations are not that great. it's not organized in the best manner, either. I never understood loops reading this book until I started learning Perl and used a book that explained it. Then I understood how to use them in JavaScript. If you want to actually learn to code, rather that just copy code, I'd suggest a different book.

I bought this book to learn how to write JavaScript, and all it does is show me the ones that you CAN do if you want to copy and paste it into your web page. If you want to actually learn it and be able to write your own scripts this book is not for you.

I will never need to buy another JavaScript book. This book covers all the basics and provides understandable examples with explanations. It also provides full program examples such as building a slide show and random images. There is an easy-to-follow object flowchart to help you remember the order objects are called as well as a list of reserved words. The comprehensive index also makes it easy to access information on a specific subject -- whether you are new to JavaScript or you use it for a living. Great learning and reference tool.

The book arrived very timely and in good condition.

Try as you might to take a class in JavaScript or implement scripts by using online resources, it remains on your to do list. You search the Internet for the scripts and can never find the exact one you want or even close enough to do tweaking. Perhaps, it's time to try an alternative and just buy a book on the subject and dive in.

This book is for beginners and intermediates who are comfortable with HTML and lack the time to learn how to implement JavaScript from scratch or without resources. Negrino and Smith set up the book by the "things" you want your Web site to do rather than walk you through all the definitions, objects, operators, syntax, and all that stuff that would make the non-programmer's eyes glaze over. There are other books that serve that purpose.

Open the book and go to the table of contents, find what you need, and start adding it to your Web pages. Screenshots and lines of code are on every page of the book with step-by-step guidelines of how to use and implement the script. You don't even have to type the code from scratch. Instead, go to the book's companion Web site to get the code and fix it up to meet your needs - a great time saver.

If you own an earlier edition of the book, this one has 100 more pages of new material including new chapters on 7 - Forms and Regular Expressions, 11 - CSS, 13 - User Interface Design with JavaScript, 14 - Applied JavaScript, and 15 - Bookmarklets. Furthermore, the scripts in the older editions have been revised to ensure compliance with current Web standards.

Chapter 7 - Forms and Regular Expressions show how to validate email addresses, file names, and URLs. It gives you a gentle introduction to regexes (regular expressions). Don't panic at the thought of them especially with the handy table of expressions and associated characters. Once you try them out, you'll wonder what you ever did without them.

Chapter 13 - User Interface Design with JavaScript gives you the opportunity to create pull-down and sliding menus. Chapter 14 - Applied JavaScript has directions for creating a slideshow with captions and generating bar graphs.

Colorful additions to the book are the Object Flowchart and Object Table printed in color to show you which objects are compatible with which browsers. The flowchart may be a challenge for beginners, but the table makes up for it by listing the object along with its properties, methods and event handlers.

If you're looking to get cooking with JavaScript, look no further than this cookbook with easily modifiable recipes. It belongs on the Web designer's reference shelf.

This is a good beginners book. Didn't get into really detailed programming but it covers enough for anyone starting out.

This book has alot of examples for accomplishing different tasks but was very light on explaining concepts and even syntax sometimes. My very first javascript program was to create an HTML table with dynamic content and it was quite difficult with this book. I'm not exactly sure what purpose a book like this serves unless you find a pre-written script that closely meets your needs. I recommend that you keep looking if you want a helpful javascript book. Using this book to create your own script was much too aggravating!

Negrino & Smith's book is a fantastic book on JavaScript for beginners.
Rather than overwhelm the reader with techno-babble and line-upon-line of code, 'JavaScript for the World Wide Web' sets out short, useful, scripts, explains what they do, why you would use them, and what makes them work the way they do.
Someone who knows next-to-nothing about JavaScript can pick up this book, open at page one and read through, following the clear, illustrated, examples which explain JavaScript from the most basic level to powerful, complex (but very useful) features such as regular expressions.
I found this book tremendously good value, and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone keen to learn this essential web programming language.

If you want clear, concise explanations and examples of Javascript, this is the book. I looked at dozens of books at the bookstore and this is the one that I finally chose to spend my money on.

The main feature that I found helpful was the use of red type in the script examples to highlight the topic being covered. That makes the differences in the code jump out. Other Javascript books stick to black-and-white text where you have to hunt through both the html and script text to see what's being described.

I also found this book's concise, example oriented approach to be more appropriate to my programming needs since I just want a brief explanation of the function with an example or two. What I don't need is another 500 page compendium of Javascript taking up space on my bookshelf. This Javascript Visual Start Guide is a nicely manageable 290 pages of useful and well-indexed information.

I'm an artist/designer and not a programmer. I searched many sites and other books and have found that this book was very easy to understand and the codes very flexible, meaning I could figure out how to add my own images, look, etc. with the knowledge that I have. Along with a better understanding of JavaScript, I've also gained a good reference book which also includes information on Cascading Style Sheets, DHTML and much more. I'm now able to look at JavaScript codes/books and know a little something about what is going on.

I think this book is for the people who dont have a clue about any programming language and just want to know what the so called javascript is. I am an experienced programmer and I bought this book because I wanted to learn Javascript, instead I just got a book that says "You do this by putting this on the Web" Why you have to do that ? Figure it out by yourself. Is a "Quick" Start, so quick that at the end you dont learn anything.
I now have it as a Quick Reference, if I want to do something just go to the book and copy the code from there, and no idea why.

Great, the way the authors explain is amazing. A great feature is how the authors name functions and variables to show what their script is actually doing. It's fairly short, to the point, and an amazing reference, too.

The Visual Quickstart series of books have changed my life; honestly. I'm 23 and loving my job as web designer. If it weren't for Elizabeth Castro, I would probably still be doing tech support. That aside, remember that these books are indeed a "quick" start which is different from a 101-level class in a subject. The book dives right into helpful scripts like browser-type detection and status bar messages but doesn't necessarily explain how to do a while loop or even basic syntax. This book, like the others in the series, will get your feet and give you a pretty good idea of whether or not it's the right technology for you.

One thing I really like is the simplified version of complicated scripts. For instance, the rollover button script that Dreamweaver uses has a lot of extra code that, at least to a beginner, makes no sense and seems unnecessary. When I looked for an alternative script on the web, I found an even more complicated one. The script the book shows you is *so* easy and it works! Why doesn't everybody use something this simple?

Anyway, I look at all of the VQS books as starters. You're going to have to get a more advanced book if you want to do anything heavy duty...

JAVASCRIPT FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB is a good book for teaching Javascript programming to people who have no real interest in learning how to program. As one has probably gathering from surfing the web, there are a lot of Javascript-enabled Web pages put together by people who have absolutely no idea about how to program a script. This book was made for people like that, who have no desire to move beyond Javascript into the world of more advance programming languages (and contains a lot of stuff that would make those badly designed Web pages work a whole lot better). It's a slim volume (252 pages plus appendixes), so you shouldn't be expecting to find very detailed coverage of the language here. It concentrates on the material that the majority of web-page designers are going to be using, so unless you're planning on becoming an expert in Javascript, the information provided here should be more than adequate for anything that you want to do.

Keep in mind that this is a book primarily for beginners to the field. You don't even have to know much HTML, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it forces the book to explain most of the functionality that you will need to know, but a curse because it holds back from dealing with more advanced functions. Hardcore, experienced programmers are not the book's intended audience, so the gaps in its information are not as harmful as they would otherwise be. The subjects that it does cover are explained reasonably well and should be simple enough for most people to understand.

Unfortunately, there are a handful of places where the book assumes the reader to have more knowledge than a beginner would likely have. To an experienced programmer, these omissions would not be the slightest problem, but the book seems to be geared more towards novices. Basic programming concepts like loops and conditionals are mentioned, and briefly explained, but don't provide quite enough elaboration for someone who has never had any experience with such things before. This really only happens in a few isolated areas, but it could probably frustrate a beginner.

The major topics that this book covers are: images, frames, browser windows, cookies, forms, plug-ins, and dynamic Web pages. The book covers other areas as well as providing a basic introduction to basic programming languages that may not be quite in-depth as it should be. It runs the risk of falling between two stools; the advanced user will definitely find this inadequate, but the novice may find a few parts too complicated. Fortunately, gaps in the fundamentals are few and far between. Once the book gets into the heart of its Javascript coverage, the beginning programmer will find lots to learn.

If you just want to know about how to put Javascript bells and whistles on your Web page, then you could do a lot worse than this book. It's far too superficial for the experienced programmer, or for the reader planning on gaining more depth; so if you fall into those categories, then you pay want to purchase something else (I'd recommend O'Reilly's JAVASCRIPT: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE). But for the subjects that the book does explain, it does a fairly good job. Recommended mainly for novices, but also for intermediates who only have select uses for Web-based Javascript.

This book is a great one for web designers who need to know how to put Javascript into their code. It gives good instructions and picture examples of how the code should turn out. It also has a thing in the back to referrence Cascading Style Sheets and other codes you use in web design. This is a definite must-have for web designers!

On the plus side, the explanations are fairly straightforward (my eyes didn't glaze over like they normally do when I read javascript books). On the minus side, the code in the book sometimes leaves out itty-bitty stuff like semi-colons which will render your code worthless. It's best to go to the site and download the code rather than type in the code as written in the book. Then you won't spend time hitting yourself over the head wondering why your code doesn't work.

I was able to understand what was going on in the explanations, but I wasn't necessarily able to modify code that relied on mathematical random generator formulas.

I tried to use this book in my classes but found it lacking. It presents a lot of techniques but doesn't teach the concepts well. There is a lot of code but the formatting is inconsistent with haphazard line breaks and wraps. Many of my students inadvertently entered extra line breaks which made their code break. For code intensive books, the full width of the page is needed and the display should mirror that of a typical text editor. All the HTML tags in the book are in upper case whereas students today need to get in the habit of writing lowercase tags for compatibility with XHTML and XML in the future. If you are serious about learning good programming habits, this book is not for you.

This book is a great introduction to Javascript. It gives simple examples of things you can do, and gives little add-ons to allow you to build real world functionality into your web site. A few more pages and another concept or two, and this is 5 stars...

just a quick note to say your sites/books are a great source of instruction and reference to the javascript beginner...
i've learnt a lot from them!

Don't judge a book by its title. This book's title gives the false appearance of being a tutorial, but it really is not. Previous JavaScript experiences proved very useful to me in understanding this book.

When I bought this book, I knew just a little bit about JavaScript, the basic principles and what not. After this quick read I was able to write some of my own simple JavaScripts, and to understand the basics of what other people's scripts were and how they worked.

Granted, I agree that this is not the best book for the complete newbie to JavaScript. I do, however, believe that it is useful if you have a little past experience with the scripting language and want to learn basic principles and how it all works together.

What I got from the book was that it gives you simple code mixed with HTML, explains bits and pieces of it, and expects you to fill in the rest. I didn't mind this at all, as it provided somewhat of a challenge. However, I do realize that this is not generally a good characteristic of a programming book. I was also able to follow it better because I had quite a bit of experience with other languages.

To sum it all up, I would say that if you have dabbled in JavaScript a little before, say you know how to make rollovers and such, that this is a good book to sharpen your JS abilities and to help better understand the big picture. I would not straight out recommend this to the newbie though.

Even if you've got the most basic knowledge of HTML, this book will have you both tweaking existing JavaScripts, and writing scripts yourself. Concepts, language and techniques are clearly explained and written logically, and the book is well organized so that you can find what you need easily.

The routines the book details explain helpful and useful applications of JavaScript, and the companion website offers scripts and demos, etc. This, I think, keeps the price much more reasonable than other book and CD-ROM combinations, with the added advantage of having errata, additions, etc., that are updated.

This book now resides near my home computer, and I'm purchasing another copy for the office. It's the best guide to JavaScript I've found.

I chose the Quickstart book to build on that foundation and provide a reference. The authors of the Quickstart book fail fill in the blanks as they go along, and have left me wondering what I missed in several excercises. I guess if you wanted to copy some code and didn't care if you knew how it worked, this would be a good book.

If you are new to Javascript and want a tutorial, then this book is good for you. You get very quickly an introduction to Javascript through code examples, just as the title of the book tells - Visual Quickstart.

However, if you start to develop real applications, and you want to look for the description of how to implement a Javascript function, then you will probably not find it in the book. The book does not even cover freqently used Javascript functions listed in the function tables.

In other word, if you want just ONE book for JavaScript, this book is NOT for you. Buy "JavaScript Definitive Guide" by David Flanagan. You will find it is worth the money.

Another book in the Visual Quickstart Guide series, "HTML for the World Wide Web", did a much better work.

This book does anything but help you learn JavaScript. Especially if you are new to the concept. I have some Visual Basic skills and this book just threw me for a loop. This book does show you a lot about what JavaScript can do HOWEVER it is easier to just download the scripts from there web site (www.javascriptworld.com) because they do a poor job explaining their concepts!!!! For example Page 23 of the sample pages (located here on Amazon) gives a line of code and this is the first example: "document. write ("hello, world")". What does "document" mean and what does "write" mean if you have never seen JavaScript or VB before. Here's their explanation. "Here's you first line of JavaScript: it takes the document window and writes "hello, world" into it". Shouldn't they tell you what document means? And what "write" means? This is how they continue throughout their book. They do not give you enough information to write your own scripts!!! So then what is the point??? I am glad I padding their pocket so they can show off the scripts that they have created. BOTTOM LINE: DON'T BOTHER!

If you want a good series of books, one that goes through the code line by line explaining everything then I would recommend WROX Press Beginning JavaScript. I am in now way affiliated with WROX. I have been very satisfied every time I have read one of their books.

After finishing a different book on
learning to write java-script, I was very discouraged since I got zero out of it! I was very
frustrated about what I did not learn, because of the way it was taught I
was more confused then anything else.
Undaunted, however, I decided to try "JavaScript for the WWW, Visual QuickStart Guide" and see if I had better
results. Well, I learned more in just the first few chapters then
I did with the entire other book! The book is presented in a clear concise instructional format - that builds a foundation one block at a time.
I recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn JavaScript.

If, like me, you already know a little basic HTML but you're still pretty new to designing web sites, then this book will be perfect for you. I decided to try it because I'd had good experiences with two other books from the Visual QuickStart series published by Peachpit Press. This one also proved to be a winner - easy to understand and fun to use. In just a very short time, I learned enough to make by web pages much more interactive and exciting. The sample scripts are great. I've downloaded and customized half a dozen of them. Just the section on "More Effective Rollovers" would be worth the entire price of the book, but I've also learned a lot about working with frames, controlling the size and position of new windows, creating pull-down menus, validating information obtained by forms, and using DHTML to create special effects.

I only started learning HTML and publishing web pages about two years ago. Before that, my computer skills consisted of nothing more than being able to use a word processing application and a spreadsheet program - that was all - I had no programming experience. As a web page author, I'm entirely self-taught and not a techie, so if I can use this book to good advantage, then almost anyone can! I recently got my first paying job as a web site designer, largely on the strength of some pages which I had "jazzed up" with JavaScripting from this book. I heartily recommend it!

(The other two excellent books from this same series are "HTML for the World Wide Web, 4th Edition" and "Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition," both by Elizabeth Castro. I recommend them also!)

For newbies, this book is a good start in the whole world of fascinating techniques like rollovers. It has a static examples, that novices can type in and possibly (maybe not, see below) see the results. It's kind of like a kindegarden show and tell type lessons.

However, if your needs are beyond playing around, and you really want to do something useful, this this book is drastically inadequate.

The book does not adequately cover the DOM (Document Object Model) to allow users to truly understand how web-scripting works, beyond creating a few fascinating (and perhaps annoying) web tricks.

Some of the scripts will not even work on today's browers. Most of the code is glued specifically to the Microsoft DHTML DOM (all DOM), which is propiertary, and doesn't cover at all the standard W3C DOM used in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape. Even in the coverage of code for Microsoft's DOM is far from even approaching adequate, meaning that readers cannot piece together enough knowledge to do their own creations (beyond some web tricks).

If you are a complete newbie, wanting to create some stupid web tricks to annoy people, then this book is a good place to start. Though, the web has far better resources on this material. However, if you want to seriously use JavaScript to enhance your web pages, or to make a professional solution, then this book is a far cry from being resourceful.