Head First JavaScript

Head First JavaScript Features

Additional Head First JavaScript Information

So you're ready to make the leap from writing HTML and CSS web pages to creating dynamic web applications. You want to take your web skills to the next level. And you're finally ready to add "programmer" to the resume. It sounds like you're ready to learn the Web's hottest programming language: JavaScript. Head First JavaScript is your ticket to going beyond copying and pasting the code from someone else's web site, and writing your own interactive web pages.

With Head First JavaScript, you learn: The basics of programming, from variables to types to looping How the web browser runs your code, and how you can talk to the browser with your code Why you'll never have to worry about casting, overloading, or polymorphism when you're writing JavaScript code How to use the Document Object Model to change your web pages without making your users click buttons If you've ever read a Head First book, you know what to expect -- a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Head First JavaScript is no exception. It starts where HTML and CSS leave off, and takes you through your first program into more complex programming concepts -- like working directly with the web browser's object model and writing code that works on all modern browsers.

Don't be intimidated if you've never written a line of code before! In typical Head First style, Head First JavaScript doesn't skip steps, and we're not interested in having you cut and paste code. You'll learn JavaScript, understand it, and have a blast along the way. So get ready... dynamic and exciting web pages are just pages away.

What Customers Say About Head First JavaScript:

Purchased this book for a class, also using the HTML book for another. There are a few topics that the book introduce early, early enought that you are lost or confused but they (the authors) will come along later and clear everything up. I enjoy using this book, it interjects light moments into study matter that could be extremely boring.I would recommend to someone who is just begining with Javascript.

The book covers some good points and has neat examples, but it teaches you something and then when you need to know another part to understand what it teaches you, it says "don't worry, we'll teach you more about this in 6 chapters." I don't know about you, but if its pertinent to the part I'm learning now, I want to know about it now, not in 6 chapters. This book is ok if you like the "new" style of learning it tries to employ. I found it absolutely useless. Also, there are very important things it teaches that should be stressed a lot harder that aren't and there are things that are stressed- such as CONSTANT- that shouldn't be stressed at all. I found this book almost totally useless.

large book of java learning fun. Came quickly and in great condition for a used book. Many thanks. I love Head First books, they make learning very dry content quick and fun.

This book was a great remedy to that aversion. Chapter 8 explains it well. window and document objects were tackled much later there. I hadn't touched Javascript for a while and had a bit of an aversion for it while reading dry tomes about the language itself. Finally, a lot of this was made bearable in that great Head First teaching style filled with eye catching annotated code, great questions and answers and imaginary dialogues between two similar or contrasting concepts etc. Thereafter any place that I saw a use of innerHTML, I simply modeled the html into a DOM tree, created the nodes of the tree, and appended that treed as child of the node the innerHTML would have gone to.

For those complaining about the use of innerHTML which appeared a few times, I didn't really see that as an issue, because they acknowledged that it was not standard (page 352) and once you hit the chapter about the DOM (chapter 8), they offered you a more standardised and accepted alternative to using it, inserting content via DOM nodes.

It mixes an introduction to Javascript in the web browser (so you get instant viewable satisfaction) with a steady diet of knowledge of the language sprinkled generously all over the place.

I would have liked to see some coverage of test driven development (Fireunit, JSSpec, jsmock ) but that may be getting greedy for an intro book plus I have yet to see it in other Javascript books I've browsed.

Books like Javascript, the Definitive Guide, while helpful about the language, were dry in letting one see applications of this language.

I also liked that they weren't afraid to delve into the more advanced and interesting uses of javascript ( function literals and function references (so as to move as much javascript from HTML and into separate javascript files to separate structure from behaviour), callback function (passed over to a sort function for sorting by an object property), prototypes for implementing class methods/properties and object methods/properties, general oop).

This was just what I needed, motivation of seeing what i can do with the language (create interactivity, validate forms, handle mouse and other input events (onclick, onblur.).

, manipulate the DOM to add and remove content).

Additionally, their sections on using firebug and debugging techniques (code commenting, a checklist of common mistakes to check when not sure what's wrong proved valuable).

I feel confident to tackle my next books in understanding the front end world ( for me it happens to be Object Oriented Javascript by Stefanov, and Head First Ajax)

I looked ahead to Chapter 3 and realized it is just the same. If I could give this book a negative rating I would. I will however share my experiences with this book.I am teaching JavaScript this semester and I was looking for a suitable text book that had interesting examples that the students could follow. In fact I thought it might be good to re-factor the examples so that the JavaScript sat in it's own file.Unfortunately no one in my class can work with the book, and everything came to a screaming halt in Chapter 2. We're now going to look at each chapter, determine what the author is trying to achieve and then go ahead and write our own code. On the surface this book seemed to fit the bill.

Also there is no link from the code you're reading in the chapter with the code in the download. Paul Welch summed the book up very well for chapter 2, so I'm not going to go over everything again. There are no steps to follow, and the book appears to be written as an expository dump. It had interesting chapters, it interspersed lexical JavaScript with DOM very early on and appeared to cover most of what I was planning on teaching. Apart from using deprecated method calls and writing obtrusive JavaScript I felt we could over-come these. Which iRock.js file are we working with.If I could give this book a negative star I would because I now have to re-work my lab sessions so that my students can follow examples instead of having no clue as to what the book is expecting of them.

Maybe the student's will be better for it.