- lots of ideas on how to do things with JavaScript that are not obvious
- explains why coding is done in particular ways
- covers cross rowser compatibility and accessibility
- some discussion of alternative ways of achieving the same result using different code
- some of the same information is repeated by the different authors
- more like seven separate mini-books than one single book
- First Edition: January 2008
- 258 page paperback
- Published by Sitepoint
- ISBN : 978-0-9802858-4-0
- Inspirational, cutting-edge JavaScript from the world's best
- Authors: Cameron Adams, James Edwards, Christian Heilmann, Michael Mahemoff, Ara Pehlivanian, Dan Webb, Simon Willison
Each of the seven chapters in this book was written by a different author who provides you with an example project where they demonstrate some of the more advanced tasks that JavaScript can perform. Some of these projects are useful in themselves while others serve more to illustrate particular coding techniques but in all seven chapters you are presented with ways of using JavaScript that are not all that obvious to most JavaScript programmers.
This book doesn't present JavaScript the way most people use it, it presents JavaScript the way that it could (and to some extent probably should) be used. While some of the example tasks are not all that useful in themselves, the code used to achieve those tasks demonstrates what can be achieved with a proper understanding of JavaScript. While JavaScript gives the appearance of being fairly similar to a number of other languages, the way that it really works is quite different and the examples in this book make it really clear what some of these differences are.
I do not necessarily agree with the ways that some of the examples have been coded (there are some parts I would have written differently) but then as the first author indicates, there are multiple ways of coding many of the things that can be done with JavaScript. There are also some coding examples included that have me wondering why I didn't think of doing it that way.
For anyone with a moderate level of programming experience this book will provide the opportunity to raise your JavaScript programming skills to the next level.
