You would think that by the title of this book, you would only use maybe a chapter or two to learn something in particular; or that this book is a just a copy and past DHTML book, but you would be so wrong. Even a beginner in JavaScript would be able to follow the smart and easy to follow examples in this book. The author shows the real ways to debug and figure out your syntax error right at the beginning.
After the basics of the first chapter, it slowly covers each topic (Numbers, Strings, Arrays, DOM, Forms, Cookies, etc.) slowly and with such care that it is impossible to get lost or not understand what the author is saying.
Each chapter is covered in 2 ways: A regular progression of understanding each topic and intermingling "how-to" sections (solutions) to get the readers attention. It is also a great way for readers who already know JavaScript fairly well to find a particular topic they are looking for.
I hate 800+ page books (i.e. Bible books) that can take you so long to find a particular topic or just ramble on and never really teach you anything. This book gives just enough detail with over-explaing, but don't think the book is too brief! I can easily breeze through this book and know exactly how to find the answer in minutes and understand what the author is saying.
I've been using JavaScript for a couple years now as well as teaching part-time web design and I've found many chapters very useful already, specifically: Chapter 5 (Navigating the DOM), Chapter 6 (Forms and validation), Chapter 10 (Working with Images), Chapter 13 (Basic Dynamic HTML), and Chapter 15 (DHTML Menus and Navigation). I could use this book for an entire course (15 weeks) and have more than enough material.
I've never seen a book that covers how to create a complete professional navigation system (Chapter 15) before. Most people just copy an paste code from sites like (DynamicDrive.com) for fancy DHTML effects, but I always wanted to understand how it was done. All the other JavaScript books I have purchased either never focused on it or was too old to cover the latest browser standards (IE 6, Firefox 1.x, Opera 8). This book has it all.
If you really want to understand JavaScript, get this book. It's worth every penny...