JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (Definitive Guides) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Readers should note that most of the reviews of this book refer to older editions which are -- due to the rapid evolution of javascript -- completely different books. I've spent a considerable amount of time the last few months reading the 6th edition of this book and have a number of complaints. But first, the kudos: this book is more comprehensive than any other javascript reference.

Complaints:
- the text is frequently non-linear in the sense that author will talk about undefined feature X, stating that feature X will be explained a couple of chapters later. Sometimes this is a good way to gradually introduce concepts, but it's used too much here. Some critics of this book have suggested you need to know javascript before reading this book, this might be why.

- Almost every concept is followed with the caveat "but this feature doesn't work in Internet Explorer prior to version Z. For that you have to use this entirely different function f". This makes the text unnecessarily confusing. How about talking about *standard* ECMAscript and relegating the caveats to end of chapter notes, perhaps adding a superscript to alert the reader about version incompatibilities?

- The examples are poor -- most show how to re-implement javascript 5 functions in javascript 3, or how to get a standard function to work in Internet Explorer 8. Who cares? This is why we have jQuery and Dojo -- in order not to worry about stuff like this. A few examples like this would provide welcome insight into dealing with compatibility issues, but in this case my eyes started to glaze over after a few hundred pages.

Case study: Chapter 17, "Handling Events". After reading much of this chapter I realized I didn't know anything about how to use events in actual, practical code. I went back to re-read the chapter, which starts on p. 445. The first example "snippet" doesn't occur until p. 457 and the first real example is on p. 466, demonstrating a "whenReady" function which shows you how "you can improve the startup time of your web applications if you trigger your scripts on events other than 'load'." Somewhat interesting, but is this really the best first example on event processing? The next example illustrates dragging an object, and is already quite complex and hard to follow.

The beginning of Ch. 17 tells us "An event object is an object that is associated with a particular event and contains details
about that event. Event objects are passed as an argument to the event handler function (except in IE8 and before where they are sometimes only available through the global variable event). All event objects have a type property that specifies the event type and
a target property that specifies the event target. (In IE8 and before, use srcElement instead of target.) Each event type defines a set of properties for its associated event." OK, how about an EXAMPLE illustrating how this works in real code? It's nearly impossible to get much out of this comment (and certainly impossible to retain anything) without an example. Only someone who already knows this stuff will follow that effectively, and if you already know the material, why read this chapter?

Additionally, some standard methods appear not to be documented in the client-side reference. Unfortunately I can't recall which ones at the moment; just remember looking for them and not finding them.

The "camel" book "Programming Perl" by Wall, Christiansen, and Orwant continues to be the gold standard for programming books by almost any measure, despite the fact that the current edition (3rd) is now terribly out of date. This book is readable, starts out with a good overview and then gradually dips the reader into the complexities of the language, included good examples, and frankly is an extremely enjoyable read. By comparison, this book meets none of these metrics. As a side note, O'Reilly (also the publisher of Programming Perl) used to be the dominant technical book publisher by huge margins, but in the past few years has begun to fall behind newer, more nimble competitors like Packt and Manning, who offer steep discounts on ebook editions and who appear to be taking greater care to maintain content quality. The affect is that at one time I would have simply assumed that the O'Reilly title was the highest quality text on any particular issue and now I'm finding this is not the case more often than not.

I must also add that I'm a fairly experienced programmer with some prior javascript experience; hence presumably a member of the target audience for this book. Whatever it's shortcomings and merits, and as other reviewers have pointed out, this book is COMPLETELY inappropriate for novice programmers and beginners. Stay far away, newbies, lest you burn in the pit of doom.

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is not just a complete reference of the language, like O'Reilly's other 'thick books,' but also provides a deep dive into JavaScript development. However, if you're just starting out and will be using one of the various libraries (like jQuery), this book may not (yet) be for you.

First, the sixth edition is the first I've read, so I can't speak to any changes. Instead, my review is focused on the book as a first-timer reader to the 'series.'

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is broken up into four parts; Core JavaScript, Client-Side JavaScript, the Core JavaScript Reference, and the Client-Side Reference. If you've ever picked up one of O'Reilly's other reference books, like Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, you know about what to expect from those last two parts - a deep reference to the language.

The first two parts, however, are a 'deep dive' into the actual language itself. Unlike a mere reference book, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide actually teaches you how to develop in JavaScript, starting at the core fundamentals, and working your way up to more advanced topics.

Part of the 'deep dive' aspect also includes following best practices, making numerous references to Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts throughout the first part of the book, which is about 30% of the book. Alone, the first part of the book provides an excellent, near-complete, tutorial on the language.

Historical information is also included, which I found to be very interesting when it came up, as well as implementation-specific functionality, that has limited use at this time (and as such, I personally found it distracting, and began skimming over later instances, but it's still nice that it's provided).

The second part focuses on the Web aspects, which is quite honestly where most people will be making use of JavaScript. This part covers about what you'd expect, as well as jQuery, client-side storage, and HTML5 functionality.

The jQuery information is around 60 pages of content, covers version 1.4, and also includes a bit about jQueryUI (a very little bit). It's quite refreshing to see jQuery included in the book, but as noted initially, if you're looking at focusing just on using a library, it may be better to get a resource focused on just that.

The second part is approximately 40% of the book.

The third and fourth parts are similar to O'Reilly's other reference books, and are therefore fairly detailed, with examples included. Depending upon your preference, you may find the reference valuable, or prefer searching online. The examples included give the book a slight advantage over the average Web site. Honestly, I generally prefer using online resources, so I don't see myself consulting these later parts very often, if at all.

Finally we come to the actual book itself. I received an electronic copy of the book, through the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program, so I can't speak to the quality of a physical copy. However, in the past I have generally found O'Reilly books to be well made, with bindings that last.

And now comes the rating.

After the first part of this book I was impressed by JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, and could easily have stopped there and been happy. The jQuery inclusion was a nice touch, which may be sufficient to push people who weren't thinking about using a library in their development to doing so, and may actually provide enough information for someone who wants to start learning JavaScript via jQuery. It is, in short, a true guide to JavaScript, and not just a reference book.

For these reasons, I must give JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5 of 5 stars.

This book is called 'the definitive guide' for a reason: it is by far the most complete book on Javascript that you can buy. Every subject, from syntax to popular libraries is covered. The 6th edition is completely updated to reflect the latest standard, ECMAscript 5. The newest features such as localstorage and geolocation are explained in this new edition. The book follows a clear outline. It starts by explaining the language and it's syntax, followed by it's features. Next is the usage of the language, both as a client-side language and as a server-side language. The book also covers the most popular Javascript library: jQuery.

I found the book, although it is written as a reference, easy and entertaining to read. The book is a great resource to use while developing Javascript, because every little detail is covered. A good indication of its quality is that the book survived five editions and is still going strong! What I did miss is some guidance around real world Javascript development and tooling. The book does not explain anything around unit testing, development environments and other useful tooling. That would be a welcome addition for the 7th edition!