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Location: Home » Books » JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (Beginner's Guide (Osborne Mcgraw Hill))

JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (Beginner's Guide (Osborne Mcgraw Hill))

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Author: John Pollock
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$39.99~~
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Seller: Textbook_TBS
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

9 reviews
Sales Rank: 25743

Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.3 x 1.1

ISBN: 0071632956
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.2762
EAN: 9780071632959
ASIN: 0071632956

Publication Date: September 11, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Essential Skills--Made Easy!

Create dynamic Web pages complete with special effects using today's leading Web development language. JavaScript: A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition gives you step-by-step coverage of the fundamentals, including variables, functions, operators, event handlers, objects, arrays, strings, forms, and frames. You'll also learn about more advanced techniques, including debugging and security. This hands-on guide explains how JavaScript works with XHTML Transitional and covers the new features available in JavaScript. Get started using JavaScript right away with help from this fast-paced tutorial.

Designed for Easy Learning:

Key Skills & Concepts--Chapter-opening lists of specific skills covered in the chapter
Ask the Expert--Q & A sections filled with bonus information and helpful tips
Try This--Hands-on exercises that show you how to apply your skills
Notes--Extra information related to the topic being covered
Tips--Helpful reminders or alternate ways of doing things
Self Tests--End-of-chapter reviews to test your knowledge
Annotated syntax--Example code with commentary that describes the programming techniques being illustrated

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 9

1 2 Next »

JavaScript Beginners Guide, Real Easy, Maybe Too Easy July 5, 2010
Mark Wuilleumier (Iowa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This was an all-in-all, good book. I have a pretty good technical background with my MS in computer science, but pretty new to Web technologies. Therefore, I was looking for a rather simplistic approach to JavaScript since I have NO background in that area. I always shy away from the "...For Dummies" books since I should at least be beyond that stage in technology, but this book is probably below the Dummies books. No programming background would be needed and not even much technical ability. Although I am biased, I have a hard time thinking how anybody would have trouble understanding this book or doing the exercises. A lot of the examples are overly simplistic and silly, but this could suit a non-programmer type well. As for me, ideally I would have liked a book that talked to programmer types more and was a little deeper. But my objectives were reached with this book: understand JavaScript code I run into, and be able to write little scripts to accomplish things I need to on my site. Before the book was finished I actually implemented some of what I learned to actually solve a problem on my site. That is pretty impressive.

5 out of 5 stars

Finally...a guide for beginners! July 2, 2010
CaroleG (Northern, CA)
When I wanted to create my own genealogy website, I learned CSS and HTML from Ian Lloyd's book Build Your Own Web Site. That's a fantastic book for the beginner and when I wanted to learn JavaScript, I bought another book from the same publisher, Sitepoint. Their book, Simply JavaScript (NOT by Ian Lloyd) was a nightmare for me! I wrote the publishers in frustration and they wrote a nice note in return; they told me it's hard to teach beginning JavaScript. So I turned to online guides, w3, etc. and it was just as confusing. If you have no programming experience, I don't think JavaScript is the best first language. Fortunately, after reading some of these reviews on Amazon for John Pollock's book, I decided to buy JavaScript, The Beginner's Guide. So THANK YOU to the reviewers on this site for your positive comments. I suppose by the time I bought this book I did have some understanding of JavaScript, but I still think it's a wonderful book for the beginner. No other source, online or books, explains JavaScript as well. No, I'm not an expert on JavaScript; far from it. And I agree with the one reviewer that Mr. Pollock needs a second book - one that has tons of exercises (real world - like adding a slideshow, a pulldown menu, a search engine - useful things - and reference your first book in case we want to go back to the lesson). After finishing this book you will still need to learn more, but basic ideas will make sense.

4 out of 5 stars

Good start point book April 22, 2010
Alain de León
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is a good book for the beginner as the title says, you don't need any programming experience to use this book although knowing some basics in any programming language will improve your learning experience, i'd say this is a book from a basic level to a low-medium level.
I gave it 4 stars because i found a couple of drawnbacks, first the examples are pretty much an ideal world examples they are the most basic and obvious uses of the functions, methods, properties, etc. and second there is a lack of exercises to practice what you are learning there are a few (2 or 3 per chapter), but they aren't the kind of exercises that will make your wits work.
The subjects are covered briefly but i won't take this as a fault because this is an introductory level book, so if you are looking for some book to start with javascript this is the book.

3 out of 5 stars

good but examples could be better April 20, 2010
James Daly (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I agree with a previous reviewer as the layout of the book is good but the sample example script is useless and something you won't use, like simple alerts, I understand to use these examples in the first couple of chapters but each chapter should build on each other and I would like more complex code, you learn by doing which means seeing code that is practical and can be used on all websites, on chapter 12 he's still using window.alert examples
window.alert is useless!

2 out of 5 stars

Frustratingly simple examples April 19, 2010
S. Lead (Sydney, Australia)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I found this book quite disappointing, mostly because the example scripts that he uses are so simplistic as to be nonsensical.

Rather than each example building on the previous examples, to allow the user to create something which actually works at the end of the book, we are left with a series of short "hello world" examples. Here is one script taken from the book:

switch (navigator.appName) {
case "Netscape" : window.alert("Firefox/Netscape is cool."); break;
case "Microsoft Internet Explorer" : window.alert("Internet Explorer is cool."); break;
case "Opera" : window.alert("Opera is cool."); break;
default : window.alert("What browser is this?");
}

In another similarly inane example, he demonstrates the BREAK command by having us write a 1-to-10 loop, and quit when we get to 5. Why would you do that? Neither example is actually useful, and there are far better ways to accomplish the same thing in Javascript.

I get that he's demonstrating how each command works, but there are much better ways to do this, namely using real-world examples. I found that even when I already understood the topic, his descriptions and lame example scripts could be confusing.

This is a real pity, as the book is otherwise very well laid out, with most chapters building logically upon the preceding chapters, and the style is easy to follow. Unfortunately I personally would not recommend this book due to the lameness of the example scripts.

Showing reviews 1-5 of 9

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