Pragmatic Guide to Javascript

by Christophe Porteneuve

Once the province of half-baked implementations and useless scrolling messages, JavaScript is now a powerful, dynamic language with a rich ecosystem of professional-grade development tools, infrastructures, frameworks, and toolkits. Presented in bite-sized two-page tasks, these JavaScript tips help practitioners start quickly and save time-particularly through shrewd use of reusable code libraries.

The JavaScript ecosystem can be tough to hack through, even for experienced programmers. There are so many extensive JavaScript reference books and competing libraries to choose from-Prototype, jQuery, MooTools, YUI, Dojo, ExtJS, and so on.

Christophe Porteneuve is here to he gives you fundamentals, the most handy techniques, and the insider's best practices. If you're reasonably comfortable programming in any widely known language, you'll be able to jump into JavaScript in no time.

Divided into six Parts, the book starts with JavaScript code patterns that are too often ignored by JavaScript coders. Part 2 presents several essential JavaScript tasks-DOM and CSS manipulations, plus event handling and timers-in a framework-agnostic way, using syntax from all the major flavors. Parts 3 and 4, respectively, hit JavaScript's best features for user interface functionality-tooltips, lightboxes, image processing, infinite scrolling, and more-and forms for receiving and validating input. Part 5 explores the client/server relationship, touching on cookies, JSON, and Ajax (same- and cross-domain). Part 6 uses JavaScript in mashups with Twitter, Flickr, and geo-related APIs.

The appendices feature Christophe's two-page JavaScript cheat sheet, followed by hard-won tips on debugging even the most maddening JavaScript errors. Next is an even-handed assessment of the major frameworks used in the book and in most JavaScript shops today. Last, Christophe presents an extensive group of resources for using and learning JavaScript and the major frameworks.

This Pragmatic Guide is strictly focused on the techniques that will get you started in JavaScript. It's where you come to get the full scope of JavaScript in your head--fast! You'll quickly understand its core syntax, capabilities, and related frameworks. Start here first.

Genres: Programming, Web, Computers

150 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2010

Reviews

[Ben Love · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recently a startup called CodeAcademy launched with its first set of three courses covering the basics of Javascript – the language of the client-side internet. I did those short courses for kicks and giggles and finished them thinking that it’s been a while since I read any formal work on Javascript. A long while – 2002 was the last time.
To solve that, I picked this up from my favorite source of programing books and tore my way through it in two hours.
This is a wonderful, quick, easy to read and understand deep dive into Javascript. While Javascript isn’t exactly complex, there are numerous quirks and catches (I’m looking at you “falsy” and “truthiness”) that you need to be aware of. The book is also quite gentle on non-programmers too, or – like me – long time programmers who haven’t programmed in a long time.
If it’s Javascript you need to know quickly, this is the book to read.

[Dave Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really good book conceptually, intended to provide working examples of ways to approach common functions in front-end design. The issue that I experienced is that the author uses Prototype as his framework, and, while he sometimes does an excellent job of comparing this with the other frameworks (I'm a jQuery user), he often leaves you to figure it out on your own. Perhaps if I ever have the time to dive into Prototype and learn its nuances, this book will raise a couple of stars in my estimation.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent, if short, entry into the JavaScript cookbook market. Broken into a number of sections with a few recipes each, it starts with plain JavaScript and the DOM and quickly moves into tips for UI, forms, and AJAX. The tips are good, and I'm sure I'll reference it again, but anyone above the beginner level won't find much to learn here.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learn at the root, not the abstraction. For that reason, this book is not so good as it focuses on libraries.