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In search of JavaScript book(s) for a kinda novice ...

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Deozaan:
I hope you didn't miss the jQuery: Novice to Ninja book that was being given away. jQuery is an AJAX library written in JavaScript, and makes it a lot easier to communicate with or modify the DOM.

Note: I'm still a novice myself so some of my terminology may be incorrect.

barney:
 :( Bought the Ninja thingy many weeks ago.  Somehow, my crystal ball application failed to predict the giveaway  :o.

We've picked up several of the books that mouser mentioned, as well as a couple of others.
JavaScript:  A Beginner's Guide is kind of disappointing/dated, but guess it works as an introduction.
JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook (I'm a cookbook aficionado) looks to be informative, but she'll need a bit of intro, first.
JavaScript Demystified ... eee, think that's kinda like the Beginner's Guide, but a bit more recent.  Suspect both will be in a love/hate category - different learning paradigms on the part of the student.

Have some jQuery and Ajax books, but think she needs to get a fairly solid grounding before jumpin' into those  ;D.

jamiemac2005:
Hi, i know this seems a little late but i came accross the thread in the newsletter and it's a topic that was an absolute nightmare in my past.

The ONE book to read on Javascript is "Javascript: The definitive guide" by David Flanagan (As posted above by mouser)... I came accross the book through another person's blog on exactly this subject (sorry i don't remember where). But essentially i read 5/6 other books including the "for dummies" and Sams "learn * in 24 hours" books and they all felt lacking; i could write the functional code to swap images, do everything that these basic books teach you to do... But i couldn't tell you a thing about cross-browser compatibility and i couldn't fix my own issues in the base code that i'd written. They left no real standard for coding, and no real advanced use of Javascript.

They also left no direction in where to go after the book. Someone suggested Javascript: The definitive guide and i read it, from start to finish, it was honestly the definitive guide. It goes through everything from basic syntax and semantics to using Javascript in some obscure ways that the other books had just not touched (e.g. Using Javascript as an Object Oriented language, and data encapsulation).

So yeah, i've always suggested that book to anyone asking where to learn Javascript(No matter what skill level). If you wish to branch into jQuery and Ajax it's worth buying something else afterwards (There's material on Ajax in The definitive guide, and a guide on where to go next but Ajax seems more readily developed and changing)... But this book was my true introduction to C-Style languages and without it i don't think i'd be where i am today as a programmer.

barney:
Yeah, it's a great book ... been in my library since I started working with JavaScript, I think.  In fact, I just ordered a new copy, since the first one was pretty ragtag  ;D.

Unfortunately, Dee didn't much care for it ... doesn't really have what you might call a logical approach (don't tell her I said that :o).  So we've been trying some other tomes.  She's partial to the cookbook approach - it better fits her approach to scripting - and she likes Jim Keogh's JavaScript DeMYSTiFieD , as well as a few tutorials she's downloaded here.

'Preciate your contribution, though, and wholeheartedly concur ... that book has spent more time on my desk than in the bookshelf  :D.

normeus:
I liked this book because it has PHP,Javascript and MySQL:

Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites (Animal Guide)

You need all three to get you going and the book has samples for all three

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