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Advanced JavaScript: Insights and Innovative Techniques

Flash is not the only tool in today's Web designer's arsenal. Before Flash there was JavaScript, which is still used to create interactive experience on the Web. And it does not look like it will go away any time soon. JavaScript and ActionScript are very alike and what you learn from one of these, can be applied to the other.

Title: Advanced JavaScript: Insights and Innovative Techniques
Author: Dan Livingston
Pages: 574
CD: no
ISBN: 0-13-047891-1
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR

So, as a web designer, if you haven't already done it, you must learn JavaScript and try to keep on top of what is happening in that neck of web technologies.

Dan Livingston's "Advanced JavaScript: Insights and Innovative Techniques" is a handy cookbook of solutions for web designers who must write or modify JavaScript code. It will be most valuable to those readers who already know the basics of JavaScript, and need advice and examples of creating mouseovers, dynamic documents, menus, form validation, or credit card number validation.

For those looking for more advanced topics there's a lot of useful information on working with DOM, events, stylesheets, XML, layers, cookies, regular expressions, folder trees, scrollers, and cooperating with ... Flash and ActionScript.

There are over 100+ code examples with plenty of comments and explanations of what goes on and why. I couldn't find much to complain about this book's contents. I keep it on my bookshelf with other web design books as a reference and a book of solutions.

The book is not only useful for JavaScript coders, but also for those who write ActionScript for a living. For example, the credit card number validation code can be easily ported to ActionScript or any other programming language you might be using; the notes on cross-platform compatibility are also very helpful when you writing and debugging your JavaScript code.

While you could find many of these scripts on the Internet, you would not be able to find so much useful tips and information accompanying them, which is the real strength of this book. I recommend it to intermediate JavaScript coders.

My only complaint is the book's binding, it is a thick paperback with a glued spine that is prone to breaking when you try to make it lay flat on your desk.

Although the book is full of source code, it doesn't come with a CD-ROM or a floppy disk (I guess that's why you can get this 570+ page book for less than $40), which looks a bit strange at first, but makes financial sense. Fortunately, you can download all examples from the publisher's site. Let's hope Prentice Hall will keep it on-line for at least 4-5 years.

$39.99 (you can probably buy it for even less than that) is not a lot of money to ask for this useful book.
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