JavaScript: The Missing Manual at Dominant Systems Book Store

JavaScript is an essential language for creating modern, interactive websites, but its complex rules challenge even the most experienced web designers. With JavaScript: The Missing Manual, you'll quickly learn how to use JavaScript in sophisticated ways -- without pain or frustration -- even if you have little or no programming experience.

JavaScript expert David McFarland first teaches you the basics by having you build a simple program. Then you'll learn how to work with jQuery, a popular library of pre-built JavaScript components that's free and easy to use. With jQuery, you can quickly build modern, interactive web pages -- without having to script everything from scratch!

Learn how to add scripts to a web page, store and manipulate information, communicate with the browser window, respond to events like mouse clicks and form submissions, and identify and modify HTML
Get real-world examples of JavaScript in action
Learn to build pop-up navigation bars, enhance HTML tables, create an interactive photo gallery, and make web forms more usable
Create interesting user interfaces with tabbed panels, accordion panels, and pop-up dialog boxes
Learn to avoid the ten most common errors new programmers make, and how to find and fix bugs
Use JavaScript with Ajax to communicate with a server so that your web pages can receive information without having to reload

Customer Reviews & Comments
§ I thought the author's other "Missing Manual" on CSS was very good and said so. ( CSS: The Missing Manual ) I am not so sure about this one. This book is meant to be a beginner book and it certainly does treat certain aspects of JavaScript well from that perspective. My problem is that the author has chosen to integrate a particular JavaScript framework, jQuery, into the examples, starting with the introductory chapter. I have used jQuery and have a high opinion of it, esp. of its CSS-like selector syntax. However, I don't think I ever could have learned the basics of JavaScript using jQuery. jQuery has its own syntax and its own ways of doing things that are different from other JavaScript frameworks and certainly *much* different from generic JavaScript. A true beginner is going to find it difficult separating what is applicable to the wide world of JavaScript from what will only be applicable in one particular circumstance. Perhaps the book may be better labeled as a getting started with JavaScript and jQuery text. §

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