T. Ellison said
I agree with most reviews for DHTML Utopia; the book is middle level, leaving beginners in the dust but pros wanting more. It is, however, well written and contains very good code and coding standards. If you are not completely new to JavaScript and DOM scripting, but would like to learn more and make sure your code is up to today's standards, then this book is for you. If you are very familiar with web scripting and/or have been writing your own unobtrusive client side code then go with a more detailed book.
H. Zheng said
This book has a lot of great stuff but you have to have the patience to sit down and read it line by line. Can't scan through the book and hope to learn something. Even need to type in the script and try it yourself. Some of the most important ideas the author just covered in two sentences. It does teach a lot of useful stuff but it is absolutely not a beginner's book. Save me from my job interview.
Ted Drake said
(this was originally published on www.last-child.com)
This is a difficult book to read for non-javascript programmers. If you are more comfortable with HTML and CSS, I'd recommend reading Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting first. Keith explains the theories behind this book.
That said, I did learn enough from DHTML Utopia to not look like a complete idiot during my job interview with Yahoo. This book is filled with project examples for you to follow along with. I will say that I tried several of the examples and had mixed results. I visited the book's web site to get updated code.
If you've already worked with Javascript, this is a great book to have on the shelf. If you are a rookie, start with Jeremy Keith and follow up with DHTML Utopia.
Mashhoor Al Dubayan said
As a developer with no prior JavaScript experience, I've been very disappointed with this book. In the Introduction section, the author says "Some experience with JavaScript might also be useful, but it is by no means critical" (Page VIII) which isn't true.
Throughout the book, the author will keep assuming (implicitly) that you already have a good programming background (he uses a more complex logic in his code),and will leave many things unexplained or explained too late. This alone will easily guarantee frustration. NO BOOK EVER frustrated me that much.
Another issue is that the book uses some very complicated examples with complex logic. Unlike other decent coding books, instead of starting with simple functional examples and developing them\it as you read a chapter, the author uses one big example and "tries" to explain it part by part throughout the chapter. This might force you to "memorize" the script(s) since they contain too much code to understand (which is not the point). To make sure if the examples of the book suit you or not, download the free sample chapters from Sitepoint.com and check the "table highlight" example at the end of chapter 3. That's how most of the examples will be presented. (with more code of course)
Now don't get me wrong, the topics covered in this book are great, but it seems that the only people who will really appreciate it are those who already have a good background in JavaScript (logic,functions,methods...etc) NOT beginners like myself. So if you're trying to learn JavaScript\DOM, then go find a better book (such as "DOM scripting").
Jon Hanlon said
This is without doubt the worst book on DHTML/Javascript that I've ever read. The author tries to be cute, funny and authorative but ends up just plain painful. The examples are over-long and artificial, and would be difficult to incorporate into a real world application. The author peppers the book with snazzy shots like "It's the modern way!" but rarely explains the benefits of the methodology he's pushing, and glosses over any shortcomings.
For instance, in discussing regular expressions he provides a simple expression for a telephone number, then points out that it's seriously flawed. But it's "suitable for our discussion" so onward we press, and a correct solution is never provided. Bad luck if you were after such a beast. (Footnotes abound - often just URLs to now broken links - so you have to wonder why he couldn't have provided the solution at the bottom of the page.) The part on Ajax is a joke - he just plugs in an out-of-date version of the Sarissa library and never scratches below the surface.
Beware.
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