Pro JavaScript Techniques

After writing disorganized (yet effective) JavaScript functions for seven years, I really wanted to get more out of the language. I wanted to code more efficiently. As each new project started, I found myself scurrying to find old functions strewn across different computers or servers. Even when I found this code, I would often need to make some significant changes to it. So, I did what any self-taught front-end developer would do: I hit the online tutorials. Online tutorials didn't really do it for me, though. The good tutorials seemed too short, and I kept reverting back to sloppy coding after a few days. Then I came across this book. The examples are excellent in demonstrating how the language can really work for you if you're willing to put the time into it. That being said, this book is not for beginners. This book is probably best for three groups of people: 1) Intermediate JavaScript developers who are ready to finally adopt code reuse and reap the nice things a loosely typed, object-based language can give you. 2) Java/C++ programmers who need to pick up JavaScript for a project. These people are already familiar with OO concepts and will probably have an easier time learning the language from a book like this. 3) Ambitious beginners with a lot of patience. After only 3 chapters, I started to think about JavaScript in a different way. For the first time ever, I found myself reusing code with little to no change required. My code was easier to read, too. I'm a big proponent of activities that give back the time you invest. Bad books don't do this. Good ones, like this book, do.

In the days of Ajax, a good understanding of JavaScript is crucial in really understanding how Ajax works. This book by John Resig (developer of JQuery) has written an intermediate - advanced book on JavaScript teaching the reader topics such as object-oriented practices, creating reusable code, DOM, events along with many useable examples. With all the fancy JavaScript libraries out now, it is good to have a book that teaches the reader how to create your own libraries or at least how many of those are create with proper object-based development. Until Ajax came along (which brought about JS libraries), knowing how to create objects and reusable code wasn't really explained much in books. This book talks about it in the first chapter, where John shows how to create objects via Prototyping, function overloading and using the Object constructor. John also talks about closures, scope, property and method creation and namespacing. All of these topics are found in other languages (C++, Java, VB.NET), but were not really used much in JavaScript until recently. John also covers in detail inheritance (classical and prototypal) and goes through other libraries (YUI, Dojo, Prototype, etc) and how they are created. A very thorough explanation on objects and creating reusable code in JavaScript. Actually this is one of the few books that have covered these topics in such detail. Many other books just skimmed the surface with these topics that made it hard for the newbie to understand. What current JavaScript book could be published without talking about the DOM. Every book nowadays talks about this topic since everything out on the web seems to use it in on form or another. This book goes in to great detail talking about the DOM with a complete explanation of the basics of what it is, when it can be accessed (waiting for the DOM to load), finding elements on a page, standard DOM methods and 3rd party functions that have been used for years to fill in the gaps of DOM methods that are not available. For instance: addEvent, getElementsByClassName, CSSQuery, JQuery and others. Without a solid foundation of the DOM, many of the cool things that are done on the web today could not be done. Another important and often not talked about topic is event registration. Chapter 6 of this book goes into the various ways and element can respond to an event. From event phases, (capturing and bubbling), traditional event binding (DOM Level 1) to W3C DOM Binding. This can be a very difficult topic to understand since there are a few differences between the way IE and other browsers handle it. But John explains each difference in great detail and makes you fully aware of how to handle it with some nice examples. John also covers creating unobtrusive scripts which doesn't assume that JavaScript will be available in the user's browser and how to handle this scenario. This also ties in to separating the three layers (Presentation, Structure and Behavior) whi

§ "Pro JavaScript Techniques" is definitely for experienced and advanced scripters. The level of abstraction is high in this treatment of the latest trends of JavaScript. If you are looking for ready-made scripts to solve some specific problem in your site or application, you are looking for a different sort of book. If you have ever gone to Douglas Crockford's site to learn about advanced concepts in JavaScript, and withdrew dazed and abused by his obtuse examples -- but with a conviction that there was something valuable to learn there -- this book is for you. The author states, and I agree, that understanding Chapter 2, "Object Oriented JavaScript" is the key to the puzzle. "The phrase object-oriented JavaScript is somewhat redundant, as the JavaScript language is completely object-oriented and is impossible to use otherwise. However, a common shortcoming of most new programmers is to write their code functionally without any context or grouping." The chapter contains a clear exposition of what the author means by "context or grouping." In fact, his concise but relevant example code to explain the distinction between privileged methods and static methods lit up all sorts of light bulbs in my head...Finally! :-) Be aware that the author's approach has a particular bias in that it is often directed at the *programmer* coming into Web scripting. The idea is to make the JavaScripting world appear more like the programming languages already known. You learn "how to go about writing a variety of object-oriented code to suit anyone coming from another programming language." This is a great book -- but not for all. §

Pro Javascript Techniques by John Resig was a very in depth look at Javascript and its capabilities. I loved this book for the simple fact that the first chapter started by introducing you to objects in Javascript. No time was wasted on the basics, you were diving in deep right from the beginning. Also, even though John is the creator and lead developer of the jQuery Javascript library, this book was not about pushing his framework. He did a great job of introducing many of the different frameworks and listing their strengths and purposes. The entire book had you building a library of usable scripts that allow for great portability while using Javascript in your applications (or even your personal website). Each chapter discussed the scripts, their functionality, their support, and giving great details to how they worked. Most chapters also gave you examples of the scripts in a working environment. A quick breakdown looks like this: The first part of the book discussed Object Oriented Javascript. This included information related to creating your own objects and extending the core javascript objects. He then moved on to discussing testing of your code and how to package it for distribution. This is especially helpful for those working in an environment with multiple developers/programmers. Thankfully, he discussed unobtrusive DOM scripting, which still may be new to some developers. The first part closed with discussions related to AJAX and browser support, both of which we would see more of later. All of part one was a brief introduction to what we would read through the rest of the book Part two discussed Object Orient Javascript in more detail. This included things such as basics of objects, object creation, references, overloading, scope, and closures. I found this chapter to provide a solid foundation for the rest of the chapters to come, as well as very descriptive related to objects. The next few chapters discussed creating reusable code and shined some light on several of the libraries available. Also, we got a glimpse into the wonderful world of debugging javascript and were introduced to some great tools to help you as you build. Part three dives into unobtrusive Javascript and intricate details related to the DOM and how to manipulate the DOM. Once we learn how to properly manipulate and traverse the DOM, we move on to attaching events to elements. All of this was discussed in light of progressive enhancement and making sure content is always available. The last three chapters of this section discussed Javascript and CSS, how to improve forms (which is also a topic for another discussion), and a practical example of building an image gallery. Part four pushes ahead to AJAX. The first chapters discussed the history of AJAX and some of its common uses. With a foundation of understanding what AJAX is, the next chapters were spent with practical examples of enhancing your blog (quick access to all posts dynamically on scroll), buildin

As a javascript dabbler, I was looking for a book aimed at someone already familiar with javascript and found this one. Having read a few apress books, I felt pretty confident that the quality of this one would be at least reasonable and I definitely wasn't let down. The executive overview is that this is an excellent book for those who are already working in javascript and are looking to improve their game. It covers a world of techniques very well. Highly recommended. Now, the longer review... This is an excellent book that deftly avoids the pitfalls so many books that claim to be aimed at people familiar with the topic. So many of these types of books try to be accessible they end up giving a lot of basic information mixed in with the advanced information - ultimately becoming a text unsatisfying for people of any level. This book devotes the beginning 15% of pages going over the basics, but it covers a ton of ground by acting more as a refresher course - assuming at least basic familiarity with most of the topics. I think it really did a great job of this, starting in Chapter 1 with a broad overview of OO javascript, cross browser issues, being serious and rigorous with your development process and their particular views on how to deploy javascript unobtrusively. The subsequent 3 chapters are the refresher course. These chapters work through a ton of topics, at times it refers you to sites on the net for further information. He starts the overview with pretty much every topic in OO development, from scope and closures to a remarkably sweet and concise description of context. He brings together all these topics and how together they form the building blocks for javascripts particular flavor of OO. Then he tackles the various ways to deal with inheritance - here he covers ways to do it yourself as well as a couple libraries that you can use. He also talks about packaging and ways to make your code play well with others. He wraps up the overview with a chapter about debugging and testing - a topic I think a bit under-discuessed in javascript and I was happy to get his views and suggestions on how to deal with these. With those conveniently out of the way he dives right into several chapters where he talks about the DOM, events and css scripting and how they relate to his goal of creating unobtrusive scripts where no javascript intrudes on nice clean html. He covers these topics by presenting a small problem and working through the code to solve that problem. It's very easy to follow and works well. He introduces several libraries to help with the process, but is careful always to explain the fundamentals of how things are actually working under the hood. Too many books that start working with libraries gloss over what's actually happening and wind up being little more than extra documentation for the libraries, fortunately this book doesn't suffer from this problem. He then goes into two more chapters bringing it all together with larger i