Product Description

This eagerly anticipated update to the breakout book on JavaScript offers you an in-depth look at the numerous advances to the techniques and technology of the JavaScript language. You'll see why JavaScript's popularity continues to grow while you delve through topics such as debugging tools in Microsoft Visual Studio, FireBug, and Drosera; client-side data storage with cookies, DOM storage, and client-side databases; HTML 5, ECMAScript 3.1, the Selectors API; and design patterns including creational, structural, and behavorial patterns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47204 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 840 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470227800
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover

Professional JavaScript® for Web Developers, 2nd Edition

If you want to achieve JavaScript's full potential, it is critical to understand its nature, history, and limitations. This book sets the stage by covering JavaScript from its very beginning to the present-day incarnations that include support for the DOM and Ajax. It also shows you how to extend this powerful language to meet specific needs and create seamless client-server communication without intermediaries such as Java or hidden frames.

You'll explore basic concepts of JavaScript including its version of object-oriented programming, inheritance, and its use in HTML and XHTML. A detailed discussion of the components that make up a JavaScript implementation follows, with specific focus on standards such as ECMAScript and DOM. All three levels of DOM are explained, including advanced topics such as event simulation, XML parsing, and XPath queries. You'll also learn how to utilize regular expressions and build dynamic user interfaces. This valuable insight will help you apply JavaScript solutions to the business problems faced by Web developers everywhere.

What you will learn from this book

• All of the details regarding JavaScript's built-in reference types

• How to use object-oriented programming in JavaScript

• Ways to detect the client machine and its capabilities

• Debugging tools and techniques for each browser

• Steps for reading and manipulating XML data

• How to create a custom event framework

• Various techniques for storing data on the client machine

• Approaches to working with JavaScript in an enterprise environment

Who this book is for

This book is for Web developers who want to use JavaScript to dramatically improve the usability of their Web sites and Web applications and for those with programming experience, especially object-oriented programming experience.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author
Nicholas C. Zakas has a B.S. in Computer Science from Merrimack College and an M.B.A. from Endicott College. He is the coauthor of Professional Ajax, Second Edition (Wiley, 2007) as well as dozens of online articles. Nicholas works for Yahoo! as a principal front-end engineer on Yahoo!’s front page and a contributor to the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library. He has worked in web development for more than eight years, during which time he has helped develop web solutions in use at some of the largest companies in the world. Nicholas can be reached through his web site www.nczonline.net. PM

Customer Reviews

For Intermediate and Advanced Programmers
The key to knowing about this book is the word "Professional" in the title. There are other books aimed at the complete beginner that will start off with a much simpler "Here's How" approach to get you started. This book instead starts off with the history, the basic ECMAScript standards and a discussion on the Object nature of JavaScript. It's written by a working programmer to fill the real world needs of other working programmers. It does this job very well.

Further, the book is new and up to date. JavaScript is an evolving language as the web grows to demand increasing capabilities. Some of these features that now get full chapters in this book include: XML, Client-Server communications, Web Services, interacting with Plug-Ins.

The last chapter talks about the next step in the development of JavaScript, with cautions that this material is still preliminary and subject to change.

Excellent book for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript programmer.

The most current coverage of JavaScript to date
Many poor quality books on this topic had been published along the years, helping JavaScript into becoming the less understood programming languages of all time. It's nice to see how finally there is another JavaScript book worth reading apart from the classic titles by Goodman and Flanagan. The book is not aimed at beginners; you either have some solid JavaScript knowledge or a decent programming experience with other languages. Compared to other titles this stands out for the chapters covering modern techniques: DOM, Client-Server Communication, XML/XSLT, and Web Services. I would say it's the most current coverage of JavaScript to date. In my own opinion, only some poor editing and organisation prevent it from reaching five stars.

Terrific book on modern, multi-browser Javascript
I don't get the negative reviews that are splattered around here. The positive reviews are dead on: this is a great book. It is probably the most advanced, most modern application of Javascript ever written. I'm not speaking too far out of line since I'm fairly certain that I've bought and read them all. Javascript has been viewed as a toy or a fun little scripting language but not one that serious developers use. The author takes great care in completely debunking this theory by demonstrating advanced and useful techniques that push Javascript to the edge, without forcing it to do unnatural things. It's also extremely honest and forward about Javascript's limitations. I also appreciated the complete non-biased presentation of the multiple browsers and their slightly varied approaches to implementing Javascript. Previously, advanced Javascript books (and there weren't many!) focused on IE/JScript only but now there is a legitimate force out there not using IE! I'm am anxiously waiting for his follow-up book on AJAX technologies. Both Javascript and AJAX are hardly new, but Zakas does a commendable job here bringing browser based client side scripting into the 21st century.

I teach a Jr/Sr High programming class and we use Javascript as the language and this book as the text. Students develop using OOP patterns and practice good solid design -- which Javascript allows. Not a teacher by trade, my day job is developing client technologies and user interfaces for the financial sector.