I have been trying to learn Javascript for a while now, and I can honestly say this book is extremely good for those just starting out. If you're looking for a reference book, look elsewhere, because this book is purely for learning.
Each chapter has one main project highlighting the main ideas of that chapter. They briefly present each at the beginning of each chapter, then teach you the different elements involved in that main project, within mini-projects. By the time you get to the end of the chapter, you already have an idea (or know exactly) how to put together the different individual elements to form that main project they showed you at the beginning of the chapter. The projects are fun, and they teach you new elements while building on things you learned from previous chapters.
This book reminds me a little of a textbook, in that there are exercises at the end of each chapter for you to do. This is helpful as practice, but what I dislike about it is that if for some reason you get stuck and cannot figure out how to do one of the exercises, neither the book nor the included CD-ROM provides you with explanations or answers for the exercises. Sometimes an exercise builds upon a previous exercise as well, which complicates it. For example, exercise #1 asks you to do something. Then exercise #2 may ask you to change the code you came up with for exercise #1, so that the code will do something slightly different. The problem is if you get stuck on exercise #1, you're at a dead end, unless the proverbial lightbulb suddenly goes off over your head.
The reason I like this book is that for the mini-projects, he shows you the code and the visual effects of the code first, and explains it afterwards. It may seem like a very trivial thing, but for some reason I don't catch on when I use the books that explain things first and then present the code.
A puzzling thing I noticed about the code within the book does not concern javascript at all, but html. Consistently throughout the first three chapters and the beginning of the fourth, he used <center><center> tags within codes, and only has one closing </center> tag for each set of double center tags. At first I thought it was a mistake, but it's too consistent for that. Every single example of code from the beginning of the first chapter to the middle of the fourth displays that. I just found it very curious.
Despite my criticisms, this book is definitely one of the better books I've read in my quest to learn javascript. It's fun, it's the only book I know of that teaches you javascript through making simple games, and except for the exercises not having answers/explanations, it's a very intuitive book.
Product Description
JavaScript is a scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to design interactive sites. JavaScript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content. JavaScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner not only teaches you JavaScript, a great programming "gateway" language, it will teach you the fundamental programming concepts you need to grasp in order to learn any computer language. It also uses game creation as a learning tool. You will learn how to program in JavaScript and produce something at the same time! Plus, the accompanying CD will contain games that you can cut and paste right into your own Web site! This book is perfect for anyone looking for an easy, non-intimidating introduction to JavaScript and general programming concepts.
About the Author
Andy Harris began teaching computing at the university level in the late 1980s as a part-time job.Since 1995, he has been a full-time lecturer at the Computer Science Department of Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI).He now manages the IUPUI Streaming Media Lab and teaches classes in several programming languages.Andy resides in Noblesville, Indiana.
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While, of course, focusing on the aspects of PHP and MySQL programming, the first few chapters of the book also make sure to teach the fundamentals of all programming - scope of variables, arrays, the different options for loops, etc.This was extremely helpful to me.With the in-depth example programs and the useful "Challenges" at the end of each chapter, I was programming in PHP from day one.The only problem I had is that he doesn't cover the configuration of PHP much at all, and the example programs on the CD require a certain configuration of PHP that is not standard with installations - so, I had to alter his code in order to see it work on MY computer.