Instead of writing one article of enormous length I decided to break it into pieces. It is all about Javascript which is catching my attention for quite a while now. In fact it is the number one reason for the lack of posts in my blog for the last couple of weeks. While I was getting into Javascript I wrote down a lot of stuff which I wanted to mention here in my Blog and I think its the best start to tell you what helped me getting started. First of all I read through three books. I use the web a lot to get the information I’m looking for but when it comes to programming there is nothing better than a good book so here is the book review:
The first book which I read was »Professional Javascript for Web Developers (published by Wrox Press)«. It is everything the title says. It tells you about Javascript in general, DOM Methods, Event Handling, RegExp, Style Manipulation, XMLHttpRequest and much more. No matter what your question about webpages and javascript is, there is a very good chance of getting the answer from this book.
The second book I want to point out is »Javascript: The Definite Guide 4th Edition (published by O’REILLY)« which gives you a very detailed, easy to swallow piece of Javascript. You learn a lot about Object Oriented Programming in Javascript and since everything in Javascript is an Object you should know about it as much as you can. The Book also provides a huge language reference which is pretty helpful too. The book is from 2004 so the DOM / Web part of the book is not really up to date but Oreilly announced the 5th Edition for August 2006 and is very likely that they will include a massive update on the web specific topics. Another plus of this book is Oreillys style of writing. As I said, its really pleasant to read, if you are interested.
Another book which I bought two weeks ago is »DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model (published by Friends of ED)«. The Book instantly became a lot of more than positive feedback from all directions. I think it is a very good addition to the previous mentioned books because it takes all the theory and puts it into action. The book provides real examples which the reader can try out in order to play with it by himself. It is also easy to read, not too dry and accurate.
After reading these books you should have a pretty good idea about Javascript and its beauty. You should be a lot more familiar with objects, you will be hungry for prototype functions and anonymous functions and you will even know what »Unobtrusive Javascript« means and why it is good practice.
The next post will be about the online resources.
There you will find out how this stuff works
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