by Patrick Carey, Frank Canovatchel
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| List Price: | $74.95 |
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Product Description
This book uses a practical, step-by-step approach to provide comprehensive instruction on basic to advanced JavaScript concepts. Author Patrick Carey’s fluid writing style and thorough explanations make even the most complex topics easy for beginners to understand and apply. With this book, users will be well on their way to create impressive web sites featuring animated text, image rollovers, pull-down menus, and drag and drop menus.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Don't Do It!!!, 2008-11-05
This is by far the most horrid book! The tutorials and case studies have nothing to do with each other! You really cannot learn anything from this book at all. The organization of this book is bad period. Not for beginners at all. I will have to drop my javascript class because I'm learning nothing! Do yourself a favor and buy the teachers edition!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Complete and Utter fustration. , 2008-11-03
Similar to other reviews my entire JavaScript class is two weeks behind trying to get a understanding of this material. The tutorials are great! But the case studies personally make me want to stick a fork in my eye and twist it. The way its worded, they want you to grab code out of thin air expecting you to understand everything in that overly simplified review/tutorial.
I think teachers like this book because they are NOT looking at it from the view of the students and already know the code; or they wouldn't be teaching it. Of course they think its a great book they already understand the material.
The book does not get any better as the chapters go on. I cant even complete the case studies; the teacher has to walk us through every class period with little time left over for lab work.... My advice to teachers, do a bit more hands on training and DO NOT rely on a book; Especially this one.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Horrible book!, 2008-10-23
Myself and 10 other students in my Javascript class all agree and have announced to the instructor that this book is horrible. Also, 3 people just dropped the class because no one is understanding or learning anything. This is our first javascript class and this book is no where near intro or basic. It says it's comprehensive.
Not only that, but the tutorials they try to show you throughout the book have nothing to do with the case assignments after each tutorial. You basically have to do your own internet research to get the code, but that still is a little difficult.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
As others have noticed, not the greatest book, 2008-05-09
Perhaps due to the presence of coauthor Frank Canovatchel, there is slightly more clarity of thought and rigor applied to program logic presentation than in the other Carey book I reviewed (XML).
However, I have to agree that the Review exercises at the end of each tutorial (I'm at Chap 04) tend to leave out critical information that doing the chapter tutorial should have taught. It doesn't.
And to make matters worse, the index is incomplete. A pet peeve of mine is text books where you can't find information you either thought you read [and want to review] or want to know if it is somewhere in the book you plan to read [but haven't read yet].
Case in point: Review exercise of Tutorial 4, Step 5 says "Use the getObject() function to create three variables..." but the closest thing to a "getObject()" function mentioned in the chapter (or the book as far as I can tell) is the getElementById() which does not appear to be what is intended in this exercise. To make matters worse, the index does not list a getObject() function. Googling online revealed numerous tangentially related topics, mostly appearing to do with Microsoft and VB. So....one simple missing step and the exercise is dead in the water. Very typical of Thomson Course Technology textbooks I might add.
So two stars because the chapter tutorials proper can usually be copied line for line (legal transcriptionist style) and will often work (not always, for example Chapter 03 tutorial created a opening HTML table tag and never ended it. Makes me wonder how well the code was tested.). No more stars because the end of chapter exercises are only moderately clear and tend to require that you somehow intuit exactly what logic the author had in mind at the time he was writing, and book is nearly useless as a reference to find more data. It is not for loss of words. The author writes like he is paid by the word. The exact same code is repeated three times in consecutive order but slightly different text formatting (for reasons known only to the author or publisher) and the verbosity of writing style would make a politician green with envy - yet seldom does it clearly and categorically really 'say' anything. Definitely not K & R.
Lastly, the text mentions color in several places. For example, p. 172 states "In the figure, object names are highlighted in red, methods are displayed in blue, and parameter values are diplayed in green". I need not state the obvious: The book is printed in black and white. Obviously, a printing decision was made after the text was written and nobody bothered to proof for mention of color. Not to mention the resulting loss of information.
I only bought this book because it was required for a class - I previously had the displeasure of another Carey/Thomson Course Technology book [XML] and know better than to buy one voluntarily.
[btw, It doesn't help that IE7 javascript debugger gives clues about as illuminating as tea leaves. "Expected object, line 54, 1" - which is perfectly good, only said object is a container for all the code written in the exercise....well now that really narrows things down!!! :-( ]
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Easy to follow - decent introduction, 2008-04-13
If you're looking to get into JavaScript for the first time, this book is probably for you. If you're trying to create commercial sites or become a JS pro, probably not. It's good for classes where students can follow the tutorials.
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