JavaScript : The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition

briandonovan writes "A new edition? Given all of the changes in the web programming landscape since the 1998 publication of the previous edition, David Flanagan's JavaScript : The Definitive Guide (JS:TDG4), 4th Edition was overdue. Flanagan delivers a book that more than measures up to its predecessor - JS:TDG4 includes a substantial amount of new material and, as a whole, has been extensively updated. The crushing gain in browser market share by Microsoft's Internet Explorer offering, the maturation of the Netscape 6.x,7.x / Mozilla browser suite and its entry into the fray along with a slew of other Gecko-based browsers, promulgation of newer versions of the ECMAScript specification (accompanied by new implementations in JavaScript and JScript), and the publication of successive W3C DOM Recommendations are all reflected in this edition." JavaScript : The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition author David Flanagan pages 916 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer Brian Donovan ISBN 0596000480 summary The latest edition of JavaScript : The Definitive Guide brings the popular reference up to date with extensive coverage of W3C DOM Level 1 and 2 and a much-improved and expanded set of appendices.

The Book in a Nutshell

Although much of the core of the language, addressed in Part I, has changed relatively little since JS:TDG3, Flanagan has added coverage of new issues that have emerged in the past several years, like the discussion of ASCII, Latin-1, and 16-bit Unicode in the beginning of Chapter 2 (ECMA-262 Edition 1, the spec that defined ECMAScript, included Unicode support for il8n purposes, so ECMAScript compliance requires Unicode support), and pruned away quite a bit of material related to NS 4.x-proprietary features, like the explanation of import and export (previously found in Chapter 6), that are naturally of increasingly less interest to developers as that line of browsers recedes into history. Much of Part II, which considers client-side JavaScript and DOM in all its glory, is entirely new or has been completely re-written. Where the chapter on the Document Object model in the 3rd edition only covered the "Level 0" DOM (the objects, properties, and methods first exposed by the 4.0 browsers), JS:TDG4 tackles the Level 0 DOM and the W3C DOM Recommendations through level 1 Core and HTML and touches on some DOM Level 2 topics, including the Range and Traversal APIs. "Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML" and "Events and Event Handling" are two other chapters in the Client-Side JavaScript section that have really come into their own in this edition.

The large (more than 300 pages), but somewhat muddled "JavaScript Reference" in the 3rd edition (it had commingled the objects, properties, and methods included in the core of the JavaScript language with those of the Level 0 DOM) has been split into 4 discrete appendices ("Core JavaScript Reference", "Client-Side JavaScript Reference", "W3C DOM Reference", and "Class, Property, Method, and Event Handler Index") that, taken together, comprise more than 400 more pages of information. NS 4.x fans can take comfort from the fact that, while much NS 4.x-specific information has been culled from the body of the text, Netscape 4.x still shows up in some screen captures (along with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape 6).

What was Great

Exception handling (using throw and try/catch/finally) is covered in greater detail. In Chapter 15, "Forms and Form Elements", JavaScript interactions with buttons, toggle buttons (checkbox and radio elements), text fields, hidden elements, and fieldset elements are addressed individually in new sections not present in the corresponding chapter in JS:TDG3 and the section on select and option elements goes into more detail than in the previous edition. Throughout the book, improvements have been made to figures and tables - like the addition of the "Supported by" column in Table 19-1 : "Event handlers and the HTML elements that support them", which now helpfully lists the elements for which the event handlers can be triggered after identifiers for the versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer in which the behavior is observed. Finally, the book as a whole is significantly more readable. The type used for the text of the code examples and tables was too "light" in the 3rd edition (at least in my copy), and I was glad to see that it's a bit heavier in the 4th.

What was Not so Great

I nearly came up empty-handed in my search for defects in this book, but noticed that, in tables 11-1 and 11-3, "Automatic data type conversions" and "Data type manipulation in JavaScript" respectively, information relating to the treatment of arrays and functions present in the corresponding tables in the 3rd edition has been removed. That's really my only gripe. Some might wish that Flanagan had included more compatibility information, but, realistically, the task of fully documenting the intricacies of what's supported by which browser (or, in the case of Win MSIE, which JScript dll is installed) could probably fill a separate book all of its own. Moreover, Chapter 20 ("Compatibility Techniques"), may be brief at only 11 pages, but it does a good job of tackling best practices in dealing with JavaScript and DOM cross-browser compatibility challenges.

To Buy or Not to Buy

If you're in the market for a good JavaScript (or JavaScript+DOM) book, then JavaScript : The Definitive Guide should undoubtedly be your first choice. Although my 3rd edition was so tattered from long use that I really had no choice but to upgrade, even owners of the 3rd edition who've managed to keep their copies in near-mint condition will probably still want to get their hands on the 4th edition if they haven't already done so - for the meatier and updated reference appendices if for no other reason.

Table of Contents

Preface

• Chapter 1. Introduction to JavaScript

Part I : Core JavaScript

• Chapter 2. Lexical Structure
• Chapter 3. Data Types and Values
• Chapter 4. Variables
• Chapter 5. Expressions and Operators
• Chapter 6. Statements
• Chapter 7. Functions
• Chapter 8. Objects
• Chapter 9. Arrays
• Chapter 10. Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions
• Chapter 11. Further Topics in JavaScript

Part II : Client-Side JavaScript

• Chapter 12. JavaScript in Web Browsers
• Chapter 13. Windows and Frames
• Chapter 14. The Document Object
• Chapter 15. Forms and Form Elements
• Chapter 16. Scripting Cookies
• Chapter 17. The Document Object Model
• Chapter 18. Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML
• Chapter 19. Events and Event Handling
• Chapter 20. Compatibility Techniques
• Chapter 21. JavaScript Security
• Chapter 22. Using Java with JavaScript

Part III : Core JavaScript Reference

Part IV : Client-Side JavaScript Reference

Part V : W3C DOM Reference

Part VI : Class, Property, Method, and Event Handler Index

Index

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