Book Reviews

DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith is the second or third JavaScript book you should buy. No questions asked.

Jeremy Keith is one of the most knowledgeable JavaScript developers on the planet, and travels around the world teaching JavaScript at various web conferences.

This is the best JavaScript book every written (I’m not kidding). It’s a shame Jeremy did not write an introductory book as well since he is such a great writer.

Of course the subject matter is somwhat specific, but if you want to learn JavaScript, this topic is a must.

Simply JavaScript by Kevin Yank and Cameron Adams is really well illustrated.

It is not quite a beginner’s book, but the examples are illustrated in such a beautiful way that makes you think it is in fact a beginner’s book. It starts off with introductory topics, and I especially love the chapter on unobtrusive scripting which many introductory books fail to cover.

It has a chapter on DOM Scripting and then goes into “intermediate” topics such as event listeners, animation, and Ajax. I really enjoyed the explantions on form enhancement, in additiona to error and debugging.

If you are a beginner, I would buy this as your second JavaScript book.

Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov is a good technical book. The topics covered are intermediate to advance in nature and should be read by someone who already has a good grasp of JavaScript.

The author goes into the basics (Chapter 2 & 3), so you can skip that. The heavy topics of the book are in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, which really explain how JavaScript and objects can work together (within JavaScripts limitations) in creating resusable code. The author also explains DOM scripting, event handling, XMLHttpRequest, and design patterns.

Apart from some missing “real-life” working examples and a few “filler” chapters, I recommend this book for the OOP (object oriented programming) coding with JavaScript.

The Art & Science of JavaScript is a book written by a number of authors and is kinda of a potluck sort of book.

The authors assumes an exisiting background in JavaScript experience and goes through different “projects” such as working with tables, debugging and profiling, vector animation, Mashups, etc. These topics are explained very well by the authors, but only may be helpful for developers who have a specific JavaScript need.

Basically, it is an intermediate to advanced “niche” book that could be helpful to some.

Beginning JavaScript by Paul Wilton and Jeremy McPeak is one of the few beginner JavaScript books I actually like. The authors cover the basics and then some with some nice little examples in each chapter.

Wrox books are usually never pretty visuallybut the topics are explained nicely and the authors assume no previous programming knowledge.

This edition was published back in 2007, so there will be some references to older web browsers, but for the most part it really doesn’t matter.

My suggestion is read this book up to chapter 11 (using cookies) and then put it down and buy Jeremy Keith’s book and go from there.

The JavaScript Bible by Danny Goodman is in its sixth edition (seventh coming in 2010) and seems to get bigger and bigger each time.

There is not much to say about this book except that you should not buy this to learn JavaScript, only to use it as a reference book. The intricacies of all the associated objects, properties, methods, events, etc and core language are more robust than you might think. This book covers everything, and I mean everything, imaginable about JavaScript whether you want to know it or not.

Buy this book to make people believe you know everything about JavaScript.

jQuery: Visual QuickStart Guide by Steven Holzner is a nice little book explaining the basics of the JavaScript library jQuery.

This book is very short and to the point, which is sometimes what you need. It is sometimes useful to have a little reference book to quickly find something then have to search on web. The book covers all the basics such as selecting, working with elements, handling events, animation effects, utility functions and Ajax.

For twenty bucks, it is worth the investment, though if money is an issue check out the jQuery website first and then decide later.

Ajax Security by Billy Hoffman and Bryan Sullivan is a very, very good book. If you are doing any sort of Ajax development you should get this book.

The authors cover the full gambit of Ajax security issues such as SQL & XPATH Injection, JSON hijacking, XSS, Phishing, Denial-of-service (DoS), etc. The authors were realistic and included the limitations and drawbacks of each tool/framework mentioned.

The book is not server-side specific (ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, etc.) so it is useful for any type of Ajax application.

Learning jQuery 1.3 by Jonathan Chaffer and others is the most complete book on jQuery so far. It covers the API and UI plugins completely, gives some real-world examples and solutions and even includes a detailed reference at the end.

This book is a lot more than just reproducing the online documenation and tutorials from the jQuery website. The authors really explain how jQuery can be used and what problems can arise and how to fix them.

After reading this book (or at least most of it), you should be able to use jQuery with any of your existing web projects and know how it can be properply implemented to make it even better.

Learning JavaScript by Shelley Powers is one of the other introductory JavaScript books I really like.

This book covers pretty much everything: data types, opertors and statements, native objects, functions, cross-browser issues, events, and Ajax and JSON. This 2nd edition, published in 2009, has the latest browser updates which is always helpful.

The explanations are geared towards an exisiting developer trying to learn all the aspects of JavaScript.