Richard Almasi said
This book is not for practical people who have an applied purpose with JavaScript.
The major flaw with this book is that the examples used are completely useless for practicality: she uses boring things like moving text around the page when illustrating a concept rather using practical examples.
The best thing about this book are the numerous exercises, you literally start from page 6 with writing your first code example. Also, each chapter is not that long, around 15-20 pages.
As a non-IT person I found the text not too difficult to understand, but honestly, if you are completely new to any sort of programming (C#, VB, etc) you may have to re-read the paragraphs for it to sink in.
If you have a practical purpose in mind for learning JavaScript choose:
Simply JavaScript, it will save you time.
Also, if you know that you really struggle with reading technical texts in computing, use Simply JavaScript.
Pre-requisites for this book by Quigley are: basic HTML/XHTML and some CSS, either from a course or from a book such as Ian LLoyd's Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS. Obviously the more (X)HTML you know beforehand the better.
Also note that this book is abit old, in "software-years", and so some of the HTML methodology is outdated.
For example the book uses the tag to change the font attributes, something which has become deprecated, or "not recommended", by W3C.
But even with these outdated HTML methods I had no problems getting the coding to work, except for a few XHTML modifications here and there.
Malcolm Bowen said
This is my first Javascript book that I had to purchase for class but when I'm done with class I am going to keep it because it is very helpful when I need help I just refer to it. Sometimes it may not have enough examples of a certain issue you are looking for but it comes with a cd as well. A great buy indeed.
Steven W. Booth said
I was reading JavaScript by Example in parallel with Beginning JavaScript, 2nd Edition for a class. I found that Quigley was trying too hard to jam too much information into a small space. As someone new to JavaScript, I found her explanations difficult and her writing unclear. In comparison, Beginning JavaScript is bigger, but kinder and more comprehensible to the new reader. If weight is an issue, buy Quigley. Otherwise, you are better off with Beginning JavaScript.
Ronald C. Hinds said
Terrific book, a little (editing) problems in the book, but if you have a little experience in Javascript they can be overlooked. Actually the few errors keep you on your toes!
--NMCC-- said
Wether or not this book is right for you, really depends on what you need from a Javascript text book. Armed with some basic knowledge of HTML, this was the perfect text to put me up to speed on the topic. There are many examples (as the title implies), giving you an exhaustive treatment of all topics. This treatment doesn't leave anything out, and though it would be nice to have the answers to the exercises, anything which stumps you can be solved by going over the examples again.
There are many explanations for every example given, but it's quite easy to skip around to what you need if you know some of the material already.
Excellent self-study tool.
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