These boys write in Chapter 2 that JavaScript has associative arrays but it is unfortunately a mistake. They show this snippet of code

var postcodes = [];
postcodes["Armadale"] = 3143;
postcodes["North Melbourne"] = 3051;
postcodes["Camperdown"] = 2050;
postcodes["Annandale"] = 2038;

and state that this is an array with 4 members. But unfortunately this array is empty, only has 4 properties. So, if you write

alert (postcodes.length);

you don't get 4, you get 0!

Quite frankly, I couldn't make sense out of it. The examples don't seem to work, or they require knowing something that wasn't mentioned in the book. For a book entitled "Simply" I kind of expected that I would be able to write basic javascript by the time I had finished it. Sadly, this was not the case.

When i bought the book i had read from overviews of the book that all i needed to know was html/xhtml but so far, after 2 chapters, i havent been able to understand anything. i feel like im reading jiberish. im not sure and it maybe just my understanding but i have NO idea what its saying. try the book and maybe u may understand what its saying and whats going on. but if you do i would REALLY appreciate it if you can email me letting me know whats up with the book and if its really JUST my understanding. i was looking really forward to the book but unfortunatly it isnt as exciting as i was hopin it to be. :(

The Sitepoint guys have great articles on their site and emails but I found this book very difficult to read. It didnt seem that the examples made sense, or flowed together to make sense.

As Im pretty new to JS, adding that to my php work, I really had a difficult time understanding all the syntax - and that is made more difficult by now having clear, easy to follow examples.

I cant and wont say that I wouldnt recommend this book because its not a bad book, I just feel that if you are as new to JS as I am, this might not be the best book to start with.

I love the fact that the book is easy to read and understand, particularly for a newbie to Javascript.