JavaScript Bible 6th Edition

JAVASCRIPT BIBLE by DANNY GOODMAN with MICHAEL MORRISONIn 1997 I obtained a copy of the second edition of Goodman's JavaScript Bible, in fact a translation of it, and probably not a very good one at that. In any case I experienced considerable difficulty in grasping certain details of the text, although I had some knowledge of programming already. But I really found the book very interesting, so I stumbled through up to the intricate applications at the end. Only a modest 600 pages at that time.While designing DHTML-pages for a website - [...] - I had to consult the Goodman Bible on many occasions. Therefore I decided to try and obtain an English version of the old edition to find out more exactly what the author had written. On second thoughts I bought the present sixth edition. In ten years the JavaScript Bible has been growing to a volume of three times the prior one.In the past month I've read some 130 pages. These comprise a part of the sixth edition that was less prominent in the second edition: a tutorial. To my opinion it has a clear presentation, although I can't judge it unbiasedly as I'm not a genuine novice any more. I appreciate its method: from the very beginning it employs real scripts. But I do understand the criticism of some other buyers who expected a stepwise introduction to the elements of the language before being exposed to completely working scripts. That is what you won't find here. May be a beginner would do wise and rather buy an introductory text of less than say 100 pages. A volume of 1600 pages is very discouraging.A book of 35 chapters counting a great deal more than 1000 pages is already slightly unwieldy. So I'm really glad that the additional 23 chapters have found room on a CD. Of these "bonus" chapters I particularly appreciate the one on solving script errors, that has increased considerably in comparison with my old copy of the bible. I'm not sure, however, whether I like it in PDF-format. Adobe's free Acrobat Reader has forced people to believe that PDF is always necessary. But PDF is inferior to HTML on a computer screen, the letters being too small or the page not conforming to the window dimensions. The page numbers are wrong for books with a separate introduction. The images are still undecipherable in a magnification where the text is just right. Nobody is going to print the 23 chapters of the accompanying CD. That would cost you many times the price of the present book on paper and, particularly, ink. Not counting the time you need to watch your printer labouring through 500 bonus pages. Only for the first printed 1100 pages of the JavaScript Bible PDF would be practical: you can rapidly reach the corresponding location in your hard copy after a find-action.Even in such an extensive textbook as this one, not every detail has been given attention. For example, I could not easily find information on what is sometimes called an associative array. In its introductory section on arrays it is not clearly stated that strings, too, are allowed as an array index, although such a possibility has been applied at different locations in the book. I may be wrong but it seems to me that only on page 952 this rule is noted in passing.All in all, I don't regret having ordered the JavaScript Bible, sixth edition by Danny Goodman with Michael Morrison, and I look forward to the reference parts that I have given only a superficial glance until here.Rob Vetter, october 2010

This book suffers from the drawbacks of all programming "Bibles" which try to cover everything. It is decent as a reference for a specific topic, but sketchy as a book to teach you the basics of JavaScript. I'm only on chapter 14, so I haven't got too far into the book, but I find it extremely frustrating. People who know nothing about computer programming should steer clear of this book. The first couple chapters seem easy enough, but then the JavaScript Bible starts throwing a bunch of examples and terminology at you which you won't understand unless you already know how to program. For instance, the book starts using arrays without any explanation of how they work. As someone who knows half a dozen computer languages, I could follow the examples, but I was frustrated by the lack of structure in the book. Core concepts of the JavaScript language are not explained. Basic things like data types are never really covered and the explanation of the fundamentals of the language aren't explained until chapter 13, when they only warrant 3 lousy pages. The idea is that people just want to jump into the good stuff and won't have the patience to plow through chapters explaining the fundamentals of the JavaScript language, but I buy a book about JavaScript so that I will learn those fundamentals. So, buy another book if you want a decent introduction to JavaScript.The other thing that I find annoying are the detailed references to extremely outdated versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. What web designer today worries about any web browser before IE5.5? Some of the text feels a decade out of date.Nonetheless, this book is good for people who already know JavaScript and need to look up a specific topic. It covers a huge number of topics and is probably the most comprehensive reference available for the entire JavaScript language. So it is definitely worth buying. Even for a JavaScript beginner like me, I am getting something out of this book, so it isn't a total waste.

books on changing technologies are always out of date by 6 months to a year (a book this size is probably closer to a year). i Google when i need the latest info, just like the rest of the planet apparently.i understand other reviewer gripes about this book, but it is still the best printed resource available. the book weighs in at a hefty 35 chapters and 5 Appendices in about 1200 pages (and yes the print is small). i found the information well organized, with a decent layout and a useable contents and index. this book tries to serve both the novice and the professional, and frankly does a pretty good job. a book this size obviously has errors, but nothing i would categorize as lethal (it's not a cookbook but has some decent template scripts to get you going). no one could write a book this size and comprehensive from scratch, this book is clearly an evolution and uses "revised" content from previous editions. i got the feeling reading this book that the authors write real code for real world apps. i thought about docking a star because it is has so much information. i seem to have got conditioned over the years to have a slight sense of dread when i have to open a large book to look something up. However, IMHO, the real value is searchable CD version of the book, hence back to 5 stars. this has 23 Bonus chapters! yes that's 23 bonus chapters which add over 500 pages. a nice touch was having references to the CD version (marked with a BC prefix) in the index of the print edition.from a purist point of view some of the recommendations are wrong, but from a pragmatic point of view no one is going to be impressed with your W3C compliant script that runs 10-20x slower than the non-compliant one (and that's not just in IE).inevitably a little dated but still the most comprehensive javascript book available.

Danny Glover's Javascript bible goes from strength to strength. I have an older version and use it a lot. I bought this newer version to keep current.If you write javascript programs you need a book like this. I have several other javascript books and I don't tend to bother with them because I have this one.It's never far away when I'm doing javascript stuff.Effectively I liked it so much I bought it twice.

Very good condition! Really liked it.!