1 comments about JavaScript Unleashed (4th Edition) (Unleashed).

1. While working on web sites or teaching web development in the classroom I have found that more and more people are looking to enhance the website without have to learn a lot of fancy programming. JavaScript and DHTML are 2 of the ways people I work with are looking for the improvements.

   This particular book, which covers over 700 pages, is the perfect addition to the web design library. According to the book the level is intermediate to advanced, but I found that the way the author presents information almost every level would find a benefit to this guide.

   With hundreds of examples to use and learn from, the book goes beyond the typical JavaScript book, giving the reader an excellent reference manual to work with. While there are no step by step instructions because the manual is written for a higher level, the novice can still work with what comes with the book.

   I found a number of ways to better the web pages I work on, also I found that working with both FrontPage and DreamWeaver this book makes coding much easier. If you looking for ways to improve what you do now this might be the best buy for the money.

No comments about An Introduction to PHP for Scientists and Engineers: Beyond JavaScript.

5 comments about JavaScript Bible, Gold Edition.

1. Very bad book for beginners, it buys thinking it that could be my best and unique book about JavaScript, my biggest error was not to have read a little in a store. In the reader level it says: from beginning to advanced, but a principiant does not learn with one minimal introduction and more than 1000 pages of reference... it seems like a dictionary. What a mistake !



2. the Gold editon of Javascript Bible is a giant book with comprehensive reference to just about everything there is to JavaScript. I rely it as my primary JS reference, even though I have several titles on this topic, because I have been able to find more information in this book than others. Realize that a big book like this has both advantages and shortcomings.



3. I just bought Javascript Bible Gold Edition. I am grateful that I only paid $28.00 from Amazon. Not $69.99, no thanks. I don't buy it in a store. I buy it only at Amazon. So I notice there is something missing in the book. It only show code language. It doesn't explain clear, only brief. No pictures and no codes example. I suggest you not just buying this book. Also Dummies and other good books that go with Javascript Bible. For all javascript languages, I recommend this book.



4. I rely on it as my primary JS reference, even though I have several titles on this topic. I have been able to find more information in this book than other books I personally own. This book is well worth the money, provided you make your living as a web developer. I highly recommend the book.....



5. The book is a very fine work and quite definitive but the pages that deal with some basic concepts are only on the CD. The CD is protected so that you can't even print the material. You need a PC to get read this book.

5 comments about Mastering JavaScript and JScript.

1. I bought Mastering Javascript and Jscript as a supplement to another book Javascript Goodies. I wanted a good, comprehensive reference. The same day I got Mastering Javasript and Jscript, however, I also wanted to send it back. Wish I had. It's an absolutely useless book. You go to look something up, and all it does is give you a table of items with what you're looking up included in the table. It never tells you what the item is or how to use it--basically all it does is confirm that the item is there in the overall javascript or jscript spec. So, I have to go back to the first book to find this out, or go out onto the internet. The last thing I checked was using jscript to connect to a database via Asp technology. It doesn't even give you a hint. It covers this important subject with just one short paragraph. In it, it tells you to go to a different chapter covering a different technology, LiveWire. It says that the operation to accomplish this is essentially the same as with Livewire, "only the object names, methods and syntax are changed". So it's the same but it's completely different. A person would have to plod through all the information on LiveWire to find this particular info; basically, he'd have to learn LiveWire just to do a simple thing like connect up a database via asp. After all his/her effort, moreover, he'd still have no guarantee that he'd be able to accomplish what he wants because LiveWire and asp are different, so he'd have to rely on guesswork. Or, he'd have to do like I'm doing, look out onto the internet.

   No information whatsoever was given on how to do this probably simple thing using asp. That's typical of this book--all it ever does is confirm that something is there. (Want to know about document.write? Well, it exists. The end.) It's a complete waste of money and of space. It doesn't even rate one half a star.




2. Too much JavaScript, not enough JScript. I was hoping that this book would serve as a JScript reference based on the title but there was only one chapter on serverside JScripting. If I had actually paid for it, I would be ...



3. Some of the scripts are useful i na canned way and if you know programming you can perhaps tweak them to your use. But the book does little to help you learn javascript... just example programs and screens.. no teaching of the why's & how's. There are better references on the web for free.



4. This is a truly awful book. It is a classic example of some joker throwing some stuff down on paper and trying to sell it. Despite its large size, it contains very little information. The book mostly consists of lengthy, unhelpful examples printed in a large font to take up space. I ended up returning it and getting the Beginning Javascript book from the Programmer to Programmer series, and it's great. Don't waste your money on this one, though.



5. If you are a beginning web developer, this book is for you. It will help you design great web pages with little effort. A must have.

5 comments about Building Professional Web Sites with the Right Tools: Build It With Visual Studio 6, FrontPage, Active Server Pages, VBScript, JavaScript, ADO, Paint Shop Pro, and Image Composer.

1. Excellent book for teaching yourself the intricacies of web development. I have recommended this book to all my students learning to design web sites.

   Jeff and Lakeland has done a commendable job. Keep it up Jeff & JRL.




2. I am on page 153, and I am speechless. I am angry at the publisher Prentice Hall for not upholding better technical standards and editing. My opinion of Prentice Hall has been severely damaged after reading this book. Finally, I rebuke the authors for their misleading self-promotion on this site. Readers such as myself deserve to spend our money on quality technical literature. Your work is an insult to your readers' intelligence and common sense.

   Yes, perhaps one should not get so frustrated or emotional over a book. But I am angry and here are my reasons:

   (1) When I first read this book I was uneducated about web design and my confusion over this book's points I attributed to my ignorance; however, I now realize that this book is majorly flawed. Where to begin? It begins, "You can develop a Web site. You can do it! Yes, YOU! ...I'm going to show you how..." So, here I am, prepared for the author to hold my hand through the process. Now, if you will, jump to page 114 and, he's talking about "Normalizing a database." Not just talking about this... on page 100 he's talking about ASP "scope." Ok, you rebut and that say I'm slow on the uptake. Ok, then why are you teaching Frontpage 98! And then jumping to ASP and Normalization! But it gets better... so I'm digging into Access database normalization... and then 14 pages later, you are telling me the difference between Gif and JPEGS! and how to optimize them!

   Come on authors, whom are you addressing with this book! You imply this book is direct towards a general audience and then you frequently digress into the most esoteric illustrations of complex topics.

   Lastly, to those would be readers of this book, consider page 93. "That ends our software installation. We also need the Java classes for our rotating banner ad. You'll find the code for that at our Web site (see Appendix A)."

   I thought I was buying the book so that I could read the code printed! And commented upon! And why are you even making me go to an Appendix to find the name of your Web Site!

   Boy, I can't wait for the second edition of this book guys! Maybe you'll tell me about the wizards in Frontpage 97 in the year 2001!




3. Worst book on web development I've ever purchased! Don't waste your money on it.. I glanced through the book once and tossed it on the shelf and never picked it up agian. It jumps from subject to subject never throughly covering anything. If you need a book on web development, select books by Wrox Press or O'Reilly. nuf said. Well... AMAZON how do I give it ZERO STARS?



4. The best reason to read "Building Professional Web Sites", I think, is to see a thorough example of how Active Server Pages can be used to make a web site "dynamic". But you'll need to know something of ASP before you begin.

   In addition to ASP, the book explains all of the other steps in building the example web site, but it overtreats the simpler material and glosses over the complex. For example, there are pages and pages of figures showing what are basically the same installation screens for each piece of software you'll be using; meanwhile, VBScript code, used in ASP, is often put forth as if its purpose and mechanism is obvious. "Visual Interdev" is one of the "tools" the book requires, yet its function is far from obvious. The program is ostensibly for creating ASP pages, but ASP code is never presented in the context of using the Interdev software. Finally, the preface, having almost nothing to do with the rest of the book, goes on about programming nostalgia, and is tangential enough to scare off an earnest beginner.

   There is "something for everyone" here, but that's not a good thing, because you're paying for everyone else's portion :-). Who, then, is the target reader? This is, as a whole, _definitely_ not for beginners with no programming knowledge, and advanced users will find much of the book extraneous (how to install your software, how to make graphic icons in a paint program). Intermediate readers like me get the most benefit, in terms of the number of subjects which are at our level.

   Rated "Three stars" since the book has a fairly grand mission to live up to, and though I find the problems quite glaring, it is not "poor" by any means.




5. The best reason to read "Building Professional Web Sites", I think, is to see a thorough example of how Active Server Pages can be used to make a web site "dynamic". But you'll need to know something of ASP before you begin.

   In addition to ASP, the book explains all of the other steps in building the example web site (viewable at www.theblowhole.com), but it overtreats the simpler material and glosses over the complex. For example, there are pages and pages of figures showing what are basically the same installation screens for each piece of software you'll be using; meanwhile, VBScript code, used in ASP, is often put forth as if its purpose and mechanism is obvious. "Visual Interdev" is one of the "tools" the book requires, yet its function is far from obvious. The program is ostensibly for creating ASP pages, but ASP code is never presented in the context of using the Interdev software. Finally, the preface, having almost nothing to do with the rest of the book, goes on about programming nostalgia, and is tangential enough to scare off an earnest beginner.

   There is "something for everyone" here, but that's not a good thing, because you're paying for everyone else's portion :-). Who, then, is the target reader? This is, as a whole, _definitely_ not for beginners with no programming knowledge, and advanced users will find much of the book extraneous (how to install your software, how to make graphic icons in a paint program). Intermediate readers like me get the most benefit, in terms of the number of subjects which are at our level.

   Rated "Three stars" since the book has a fairly grand mission to live up to, and though I find the problems quite glaring, it is not "poor" by any means.

No comments about Professional JavaScript Frameworks: Prototype, jQuery, YUI, ExtJS, Dojo and MooTools.

3 comments about Web Application Design and Implementation: Apache 2, PHP5, MySQL, JavaScript, and Linux/UNIX (Quantitative Software Engineering Series).

1. This is the book I wish I had had when I was starting to set up my Books-On-Line web site. Here in one simple step is just about half of what you need to know to set up a fairly complex database driven web site. I say about half of what you need to know because he spends no time at all on appearance, type fonts, color, illustrations, all that stuff. As he says in the introduction, he's not good at that (neither am I), and for those subjects you need another book.
   
   But for a functioning web site he recommends what is sometimes called LAMP - for Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP. To summarize why:
   
   The software is FREE, a very good price.
   It doesn't crash as often
   It runs faster so you can use a slower computer.
   
   By the time you finish, you'll probably want at least one book on each of these software packages, but here is an excellent place to start. It gives you enough to get started and you only need to go deeper into each of these packages when you start getting fancier. The nice thing about this book is that it gives you everything you need to get started in a well written, easy to understand way.
   
   Mr. Gabarro, there are two things I would suggest for your next edition: One, include a cd of a working collection of the four packages rather than saying go get any distribution, and two, talk a little about past and emerging technologies such as Cold Fusion for the past, and Ruby on Rails for the future. I'd be interested in your opinions.



2. Have read 40% of the book so far. There are many places where visual aspects are discussed, and there are no visual illustrations!!. The book is clearly aimed at people whose knowledge is elementary in the areas being discussed, and yet there is no attempt to make it easy for the reader to learn. Also, the examples are unimaginative.
   
   On the bright side, I like the casual conversational style.



3. Hi guys, first of all, thanks for actually considering buying this book. I do appreciate all reviews, whether they are good or bad, as this is the very first book I wrote. I do have to say in response to T.Arora that I did spend a lot of time writing this book (took me over a year), and the reason I did not include more images was a contractual restrictions. I was told to write a book of about 300 pages, and adding images would have made me go way over board. I felt it was more important to concentrate on explanations and the actual code. After that, you could always write the code and see what it looks like.
   
   I do hope you read it till the end. I've heard good things about the last chapter, when everything gets together. Hopefully you will like my examples a little better. :)
   
   For those thinking on whether or not to buy the book, realize that this book is about learning how to make database-driven websites, not how to make pretty pages. If you want to learn tricks and dangers of Web programming, the book can definitely help you. If you just want to learn Web design and how to choose colors, get a different book.
   
   Thanks to all of you that have purchased it so far! :)

5 comments about DHTML Utopia Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM.

1. This is without doubt the worst book on DHTML/Javascript that I've ever read. The author tries to be cute, funny and authorative but ends up just plain painful. The examples are over-long and artificial, and would be difficult to incorporate into a real world application. The author peppers the book with snazzy shots like "It's the modern way!" but rarely explains the benefits of the methodology he's pushing, and glosses over any shortcomings.
   For instance, in discussing regular expressions he provides a simple expression for a telephone number, then points out that it's seriously flawed. But it's "suitable for our discussion" so onward we press, and a correct solution is never provided. Bad luck if you were after such a beast. (Footnotes abound - often just URLs to now broken links - so you have to wonder why he couldn't have provided the solution at the bottom of the page.) The part on Ajax is a joke - he just plugs in an out-of-date version of the Sarissa library and never scratches below the surface.
   Beware.



2. As a developer with no prior JavaScript experience, I've been very disappointed with this book. In the Introduction section, the author says "Some experience with JavaScript might also be useful, but it is by no means critical" (Page VIII) which isn't true.
   
   Throughout the book, the author will keep assuming (implicitly) that you already have a good programming background (he uses a more complex logic in his code),and will leave many things unexplained or explained too late. This alone will easily guarantee frustration. NO BOOK EVER frustrated me that much.
   
   Another issue is that the book uses some very complicated examples with complex logic. Unlike other decent coding books, instead of starting with simple functional examples and developing them\it as you read a chapter, the author uses one big example and "tries" to explain it part by part throughout the chapter. This might force you to "memorize" the script(s) since they contain too much code to understand (which is not the point). To make sure if the examples of the book suit you or not, download the free sample chapters from Sitepoint.com and check the "table highlight" example at the end of chapter 3. That's how most of the examples will be presented. (with more code of course)
   
   Now don't get me wrong, the topics covered in this book are great, but it seems that the only people who will really appreciate it are those who already have a good background in JavaScript (logic,functions,methods...etc) NOT beginners like myself. So if you're trying to learn JavaScript\DOM, then go find a better book (such as "DOM scripting").



3. (this was originally published on www.last-child.com)
   
   This is a difficult book to read for non-javascript programmers. If you are more comfortable with HTML and CSS, I'd recommend reading Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting first. Keith explains the theories behind this book.
   
   That said, I did learn enough from DHTML Utopia to not look like a complete idiot during my job interview with Yahoo. This book is filled with project examples for you to follow along with. I will say that I tried several of the examples and had mixed results. I visited the book's web site to get updated code.
   
   If you've already worked with Javascript, this is a great book to have on the shelf. If you are a rookie, start with Jeremy Keith and follow up with DHTML Utopia.



4. This book has a lot of great stuff but you have to have the patience to sit down and read it line by line. Can't scan through the book and hope to learn something. Even need to type in the script and try it yourself. Some of the most important ideas the author just covered in two sentences. It does teach a lot of useful stuff but it is absolutely not a beginner's book. Save me from my job interview.



5. I agree with most reviews for DHTML Utopia; the book is middle level, leaving beginners in the dust but pros wanting more. It is, however, well written and contains very good code and coding standards. If you are not completely new to JavaScript and DOM scripting, but would like to learn more and make sure your code is up to today's standards, then this book is for you. If you are very familiar with web scripting and/or have been writing your own unobtrusive client side code then go with a more detailed book.

No comments about JavaScript Professional Projects.

3 comments about The Web Wizard's Guide to JavaScript (Addison-Wesley Web Wizard Series).

1. This book does the job. It teaches concepts not just code. You can get lots of code examples for free on the internet. The only reason to buy a book is to learn how things work not just how to make things happen. One nice feature of the book is that it doesn't delve into every possible method or property. instead the author selected the most practical aspects of the language to teach. It is not the last book on JavaScript you will ever need but it makes a good first book on the topic.



2. I love the web wizard's series, and had high hopes for using this book in an intro-level course. But the programming concepts come too fast for someone who hasn't done any programming. Chapter 1 throws out a zillion concepts without giving enough concrete examples of how they are used, so they will remain abstract to novices.

   An example: comparison operators are introduced on page 10, when one has no conceivable use for them. And then on page 20, we get to loops, and on page 21, conditional statements. You just can't pick up javascript this way unless you already know how to program.

   This is probably a fine book for folks who already know how to program, but want to pick up javascript. But OTOH, if you already know how to program, aren't you ready for the O'Reilly Javascript books?

   I'm not sure what this book's niche is. I thought the web wizard's series was for novices.




3. Estrella provides a quick introduction to JavaScript. Enough details to understand the basic coding ideas. The illustrations and examples are also well chosen to reinforce this learning.
   
   He demonstrates that JavaScript can greatly enhance the interactivity of your web pages. It complements the static features of HTML, by letting you write dynamic pages, that have behaviour as well as a single visual representation.
   
   The book does not try to give a comprehensive overview of the language. But it should encourage you to seek out more information.