JavaScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 5Customer Rating: 5
Summary: Woohoo!!
Comment: I just finished taking Andy Harris' Client-Side Web Programming class at IUPUI that follows this book. Written in English, not computerese, this practical, how-to guide equips you with tools that get you in the saddle and off and running as a javascript programmer. Armed with just this information, you can create highly versatile and functional web programs of which you can be proud. The applications for these concepts are limitless. Go Andy!
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: learning javascript
Comment: 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
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.
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: Good book
Comment: I didn't actually buy this book, but did a little browsing through it at the bookstore, and I can say that it is a good book for the absolute beginner. It's clearly written in a style that is fun and easy to read and NOT confusing. The examples keep you focused on learning the material - it's like swimming at the beach - you get exercise and enjoy yourself at the same time. You could have virtually no programming experience and do okay with this book (provided you have a basic familiarity with HTML).
Having some programming experience already, I opted for Javascript for the Worldwide Web instead as it appealed more to my left-brained need to know the elements of javascript right away. I'd rather skip the examples (muffins from the oven) in exchange for the ingredients to the muffins, if you know what I mean. That way I can use the ingredients any way I choose - banana walnut muffins, blueberry muffins, coconut cream muffins - you get the picture.