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Title: JavaScript: A Beginner's Guide by John Pollock ISBN: 0-07-213140-3 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 23 March, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (23 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great for beginners who want to get good at JavaScript
Comment: I haven't looked at many beginners JavaScript books for awhile until this one. I found out on a Thursday that it would be the text book for a class I was to begin teaching on the following Tuesday. Previously I had recommended "Teach Yourself JavaScript 1.3 in 24 Hours" by Michael Moncur to get through the doorway and start using JavaScript. While that's still a fine book, I have to say that I'm really impressed with this one and Pollock's expertise of the subject.
This book takes the reader by the hand and speaks in a very mentoring tone. The text asks the right questions to help seal in the knowledge and offers intermediate steps should one like to take them. This is a great book to start off with, and absent the JavaScript Bible by Danny Goodman, it makes a fairly decent reference guide.
Rating: 5
Summary: An actual beginner's guide! Excellent!
Comment: SHORT:
Real beginner's books are very rare, but this is one! This book takes you by the hand and no questions or problems arise while studying it. The book contains a lot of examples and after reading it and going through the exercises, you will have a good overview of what you can do with Javascript.
LONG:
As I changed jobs the need came up to learn some scripting languages fast. I started with the client side and ordered this book since it had good reviews. I have an intermediate programming background, for instance a year of bug fixing a Java application, so it turned out that this book was a bit on the light side for me personally. I was just so used to the fact that what is called a beginner's book usually isn't, not really anyway. This is one though!
Still, after reading this book in three days cover to cover, I found that it gave me a very nice overview of what is possible with Javascript and when to use it. Real beginner's will need a bit more time, since they will not have seen basic programming routines like events, conditional statements and such.
Besides just learning Javascript, a beginner will get a headstart on more serious programming languages.
Very recommendable for beginner's (or intermediate programmers that like an easier read at times ,besides their Dilbert calendar).
Rating: 4
Summary: Better than others
Comment: I had waited a while to actually come up with a book that i can speak about, and i must say that i found this one to be far more respectible than some of the other books i have read. It is often times difficult to know which reviews to really follow because you are never really sure of the mental health/quality of those who come up with the reviews. Seems like the prism of subjectivity is a difficult barrier to transcend. Very few people can honesty speak with authority, and objectivity in their criticisms of another.
At any rate, there are 2 books that i have actually bought on the subject of Ja--Script (aka Javascript), and out of the 2, this one by John Pollock was far more "clean-cut" with regards to its presentation of the subject matter than "JavaScript for the World Wide Web" by Tom Degrino, and Dori Smith. In terms of examples, and brief explanations, the aforementioned wasn't bad, but in terms of explanatory breadthe, and in terms of depth, and in terms of interconnectivity between one chapter and another, the book was lacking.
Additonally, this book (the one by Tom, and Dori)took up an aweful lot of space in including HTML tags when it presented a coded page example that i thought was stupid. For me, if a person already knows what a tag is, and they have in fact created Tables, then there was really no point to including an actual webpage code (in its entirety) so that a person knows the difference between the head section, and body section of a document. For me, if you really need the over-board use of illustratives idiagrams to make a point about how you can make a reference "call" between the body portion of a document, and the head portion, then seriously speaking, you need to learn HTML first before you get into Ja--Scripting. This too me was wasted typing space for a much more relevant inclusions of the subject matter. For this reason, i found John Pollocks book by far more commanding of my respect.
And this for the record is not to say that for whatever reasons there is not always an inclusion of an actual webpage code in it's entirity. Johns Book did include tags for contextualisation purposes, but still, it was not as bad the other book. This doesn't really make sense to me. Or at least, not totally. There is only a few things one needs to know that is of major importance, and that is the tags, and how to make a reference to an external file. And to be honest, all you would need is a few pages that explains how the tags are created, and where they are created. But over and beyond this, i find the excess use of HTML tags in an example about a different language annoying. This is like calling a book "BaseBall Basics," but half the book is filled up with concepts that relate to FootBall. If there is going to be inclusion of more than one subject specifically, then use a different title. Otherwise stick with the name of the title. But over all, John Pollocks book so far was the better of the 2.
If we are to speak of flaws, i would say that the primary flaw of the book was it's lack of interconnection between chapters. Don't get me wrong, as far as learning the name of rules, and syntical symbols of the language, the book was great. However, most of the subjects discussed in what he called "modules" instead of "chapters" did not really build on one another. These chapters for the most part were isolated concepts and did not necessarily interconnected them, so that you can see how a whole system of these concepts can build some rather impressive effects that are not achievable with HTML. The general feel of the book was really grammatical, and analogically referencial rather than an actual collection of class study examples that hammer down the main concepts of the programming language known as JavaScript. But over, and beyond this, i found the book far more effective in geting its lessons accross than the other book mentioned.
The key to the book is its title. It is geared towards an introduction into this language, and not necessarily towards those more interested in higher levels of programming skills. For this reason i think the book will fall short of really showing thorough examples of the over all power of this programming language. But if you want to practise in a bath tub before you jump into the ocean for a marathon of some sort, this is a great book for that. It really does a great job at discussing the alphabet of the language. But it doesnt really get you to reading at a decent level. This is my analogy for how this book should be viewed: This book is great if you don't want to be thrown to the sharks.
I have not read any of the books by Danny Goodman, but from what i have ran into on amazons linking adventures, he seems to be a popular author with DHTML, and Ja--Script. His books presumably are college level rather than kindergarten in the sense that all you are learning are the A,B,Cs of things. I will have to reread John Pollocks book again, before i jump onto the Bible series of this language.
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Title: HTML: A Beginner's Guide by Wendy Willard ISBN: 0072130261 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 15 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition by Elizabeth Castro ISBN: 0321130073 Publisher: Peachpit Press Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.99 |
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Title: JavaScript Bible, 4th Edition by Danny Goodman ISBN: 0764533428 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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Title: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan ISBN: 0596000480 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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Title: JavaScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Andrew Harris, Andy Harris ISBN: 0761534105 Publisher: Premier Press Pub. Date: 14 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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