I purchased Beginning JavaScript and learned a lot even though I have a good programming background (Java, C++, Q-Basic, HTML, CSS, PHP). The Beginning JavaScript helped learn all of the quirks of the Browser Object Model and Document Object Model (the basic programming skills lessons did were too easy). The Professional JavaScript is great because it gets to the point with the "basic" programming and then teaches you some of the more advanced concepts/methods. It also goes into more depth of the BOM and DOM. There are NOT a lot of coding examples like the Beginning JavaScript (which I like because they take up space making the book large and are often too easy or obvious). If you have programming experience (particularly any JavaScript programming), then the Professional JavaScript book is for you- you should still learn plenty without having to deal skip over all of the basics.

I'm not an expert Web developer, till now I developed many C/S application but only few Web application. This book helped me in this task. I've found everything I need to develop my application. But way there isn't a CD.
Heida Pierpaolo

If you're like me and learnt Javascript by writing minor UI snippets or by copying and pasting examples found on the Internet, then you may have some gaps in your understanding and usage of the language.
This book definitely helped me moving from a casual Javascript programmer to an efficient Javascript professional. The book is packed with working code that support the chapters and that can be used straight away in your own applications.
The book is focused in two important things: giving you a solid understanding of the language's concepts and structure, and also providing you a host of solutions to real problems that you are likely to face when trying to deploy your application in such a diverse environment as the Internet and (especially) all the different browsers used to navigate it.
After reading just a few chapters you'll find yourself saying "Wow, I didn't think you could do that at all in Javascript. Let alone that elegantly."

Very well written. Covers a lot of important aspects as far as javascript development is concerned. It helped me out in 3 of my web development projects already, provided in-depth concise answers. Thanks to the author, very well written.

... how do i know this?
I'm not good at writing reviews, but when I wanted to get a handle on JavaScript I went to the local Library and checked out close to 10 different books on JavaScript that looked promising.
I went through each of them, one by one, discarding them as I went along because they were outdated, badly written, boring etc.
After all that I was left with this book. I read it bit by bit, and used it in writing code for personal and professional projects until I felt I was competent at JavaScript.

This book reads well, and is interesting enough that (if you had some programming knowledge) you could pick it up and not want to put it down because you would actually feel like you were learning as you turned each page. I'd recommend it (and regularly do) to anybody.

After plowing through the initial stage of immense frustration that most people trying to learn JavaScript do (and finding that there are very few good books on it), I stumbled across this. I was initially surprised by it's length - but don't be intimidated, it's chock full of good, useful content. If you have a little experience with JavaScript, this will take you to the next level and also serve as a very useful reference. I might not have grasped all the techniques at first but I generally had an idea of how to do something or where to look in the book when I sat down to put my thoughts to work. The only qualms I have are with the later chapters on things like client-server communication, JavaScript and XML, and Web Services. They seemed to lack a bit in the example and explanation section. Sure, I learned how to set up a cross-browser method of creating HTTP requests - but the process seemed lacking in the same care and devotion in explaining why I was or providing me with a solid example of how to use it. However, these chapters were still very useful and someone interested in these topics should use them as a springboard (just not the definitive guide). Overall, a solid book on a topic that has few. Kudos to Nicholas C. Zakas.

I think you can find several other JavaScript books that contain the same technical material as this book but this book's strength, in my opinion, is the author's delivery. The author does a very, very good job at explaining and this is what makes this book great. His explanations were very thorough and he seemed to anticipate my questions. I don't usually like the Wrox books but this one is a winner.

It's obvious that the author has a Java background because he often compares Java to JavaScript. The author does not rely upon or expect his reader to know Java though, but if you do you will find his comparisons useful.

The only (minor) negative aspect of this book is that the author spends the first four chapters presenting the core JavaScript language but it's not until chapter 5 that he shows you how to actually *run* JavaScript code in a browser. Now, many readers will already know how to do this but if you don't you might be a little anxious to run the code in chapters 1-4. I feel this is a very minor criticism though and it does not detract from the book's five-star rating, in my opinion.

I have been doing programming for many years. I have done a lot of Java/J2EE and iSeries programming. Recently I was given a project which needed JavaScript to be implemented. The Nicholas' book on JavaScript allowed me to learn the language in a week up to the point to be able to produce a production level code. Excellent work!

It's tough as a javascript programmer. Besides the loosely type and debugging, there are many differences between browsers. you must be familiar with BOM(browser object model), DOM(document object model) and HTML,then could become a just good(not well, not enough) programmer of javascript. There are many things needs to know........
This book is for the programmer with some background of the above, besides some programming experience of other OO language. If only the other OO language, you may be confused about many codes digests which mix different BOM, standard DOM, and HTML without annotation.
There are many new skill and information about the upgraded javascript and the comparative implement of different browsers for a javascript programmer. It's great. Highly commend!

The first five chapters of this book provide a good history of ECMAScript, and a solid explanation of the basics of the javascipt language (syntax, types, functions, objects, ...).

Unfortunately I found the latter two-thirds of the book to be lacking. The chapters on the DOM are very light, and omit crucial details. For example, the different semantics given to NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT by NodeIterator and TreeWalker are completely omitted. This cost me an hour of my life that I'll never get back.

The chapter on regular experssions is poorly organized in the extreme. If you are not already fluent in perl-compatible or POSIX regular expressions, avoid the chapter as it will only serve to confuse you. Any other text on regular expressions will serve you better, even regex(7).

Caveats aside, I remain moderately happy with this text. I inhaled the first 150 pages of background in an evening and have moved on to reading the formal specifications at www.w3.org.

This book covers great topics and is really a great reference. If you have basic knowledge of Javascript, you can get this book and get to the pro level. He has shown some great techniques and has very well explained all the topics that are covered in the book.

Overall a must have book that you can't miss to collect.

I was in the market looking for a good book on javascript and found... a marked lack of them. Most javascript resources seem targetted towards the non-programmer - they focus on using existing snippets of code and existing libraries and incorporating them usefully. But they do not attempt to explain exactly what is happening and why it is happening - they don't give you the ability to do anything from scratch.

This book, thankfully, goes into perfect detail on everything. It tackles difficult areas like the DOM with clarity and good organization. The book progresses very logically and the writing is very clear.


It gives very broad and fairly deep coverage of the language - from the very basics to Objects and Inheritance to DOM and to client-server communications. Each section is well written, it does not condescend but is very accessible. This book, being out earlyish, modestly suggests itself as an introduction to AJAX techniques - however, I found it much more useful than other books explicitly dedicated to the technology.

Another very useful touch is his attention to cross platform issues, giving you code snippets to make things work in all (or at least most) browsers.

Overall this is an excellent book.

There are lots of books that are explicitly about AJAX, and tell you so right in the title. But the "J" in AJAX stands for JavaScript of course, and no matter what approach you use--XmlHttpRequest or hidden iframes, DOM manipulation or innerHTML--you'd better know your JavaScript. This book covers it from the ground up. The people who came up with all the cool techniques associated with AJAX were able to do so because they knew the inner workings of JavaScript. There are many hot AJAX books out there--and, let it be said, many of them are quite good, including the author's Professional AJAX. While reading those books will give you insight into the known and understood techniques of AJAX, this book will give you the JavaScript chops that will enable you to come up with even more techniques for producing asynchronous interactive interfaces.

The best book about JavaScript is still David Flanagan's excellent book. But Zakas' book is by far the best book on using JavaScript in a production environment. Every page gives you the real world detail you need to harness this powerful languages. The section on XSLT and Mozilla was worth the price of the book alone. Highly recommended if you want to do professional work with JavaScript.

EXCELLENT BOOK on JavaScript :).
Gets into detail and explains everything CLEARLY!
The book focuses on stuff you know you'll need in web development.
I also like how Nicholas makes sure you've understood the concepts by showing useful examples and code samples.
It doesn't cover EVERYTHING JavaScript has to offer of course...But that's what experimenting and discovering is all about :)...And this book is a very good foundation for that :)

Most JavaScript books start with a "hello world" alert script, and object-oriented programming is usually a 15-page chapter near the end. Zakas' book gives a brief review of what JS is (useful to even experienced developers), and then dives straight into using JavaScript in a fully OOP, enterprise environment. He focuses on making JavaScript behave like a real software development language, with reusable objects, classes, hierarchies and the like. If you want to write highly complex browser-based applications, this book absolutely must be on your desk.

Good Javascript Programming reference and pragmatic explanations. Much better than most of the bloated javascript garbage books that I don't know who has the patience to read much less understand.

The author did a very nice job of capturing the latest usage for javascript. Great DOM & XSL coverage. Very detailed examples. Even tips for handling Browser cross overs. This book also covers some AJAX and differing browser vendors and how to deal with it. Much more. The book is pretty stacked with 646 pages. Writing style is very good. I learned a whole lot. This is the best javascript book - pound per pound. Only suggestion I would add is... I wish the author could toss in some screen shots here and there.

I don't get the negative reviews that are splattered around here. The positive reviews are dead on: this is a great book. It is probably the most advanced, most modern application of Javascript ever written. I'm not speaking too far out of line since I'm fairly certain that I've bought and read them all. Javascript has been viewed as a toy or a fun little scripting language but not one that serious developers use. The author takes great care in completely debunking this theory by demonstrating advanced and useful techniques that push Javascript to the edge, without forcing it to do unnatural things. It's also extremely honest and forward about Javascript's limitations. I also appreciated the complete non-biased presentation of the multiple browsers and their slightly varied approaches to implementing Javascript. Previously, advanced Javascript books (and there weren't many!) focused on IE/JScript only but now there is a legitimate force out there not using IE! I'm am anxiously waiting for his follow-up book on AJAX technologies. Both Javascript and AJAX are hardly new, but Zakas does a commendable job here bringing browser based client side scripting into the 21st century.

I teach a Jr/Sr High programming class and we use Javascript as the language and this book as the text. Students develop using OOP patterns and practice good solid design -- which Javascript allows. Not a teacher by trade, my day job is developing client technologies and user interfaces for the financial sector.

I love all the Wrox books. This book covers all the basics of using JavaScript. The examples are good and easy to understand. It is hard to find books with "useable" examples. Meaning ones that you can actually apply the example toward what you are doing.

The only thing I don't like is that they don't cover all the different functions, etc. It covers what the author thinks is the most important and widely used items.

The book is well written and the examples are helpfull so I have to give them 4 stars.

Classic Wiley style: boring and heavy reading and not good "Try it Out" or "How it Works" sections. Bad choice from Wrox as professional guides.

The book covers a broad range of (very practical) topics, with practical cases worked out in detail that are not only useful in themselves but also implicitly clarify techniques. For me the book also contained quite a few eye-openers, possibly because I'm relatively a beginner in this field. This also illustrates, however, that you don't need to be a professional to read this book. I cannot judge how much it brings for someone with substantially more background than I have.

I really have appreciated this book. I've read the O'Reilly series, and a few other JavaScript books, and I have to say - this one is clear, has useful examples, and outlines the why and how very well. Sometimes the story gets a little complex - for example, the author describes how to use Object.prototypes by explaining the history of their use - which gets progressively more convoluted before it gets simple again). This isn't probably very good teaching technique, but I really appreciated learning how people view and hack JS to get what they need.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone thinking of doing serious browser Javascript.

In the same paragraph, and sometimes in the same sentence, the book has both "toLocalString" and "toLocaleString." This happens multiple times. This kind of gross error is disconcerting.

Many poor quality books on this topic had been published along the years, helping JavaScript into becoming the less understood programming languages of all time. It's nice to see how finally there is another JavaScript book worth reading apart from the classic titles by Goodman and Flanagan. The book is not aimed at beginners; you either have some solid JavaScript knowledge or a decent programming experience with other languages. Compared to other titles this stands out for the chapters covering modern techniques: DOM, Client-Server Communication, XML/XSLT, and Web Services. I would say it's the most current coverage of JavaScript to date. In my own opinion, only some poor editing and organisation prevent it from reaching five stars.

I'm reinstating my much maligned one star review wherein I pointed out that this book's first glaring mistake was on page 12. On which page the author states that comments in Javascript are just like Perl, whereas in Perl comments start with '#', actually quite unlike Javascript.

Well the author does it again in Chapter 11, and now my complaint pertains specifically to code. Specifically the FormUtil.tabForward() method. You may as well just get your code from some lame online script repository, because it contains the same sort of error.

The whole point of a "tabForward" method is to assist users who are used to using keyboard shortcuts. As a user of keyboard shortcuts, I don't expect code that tabs forward automatically to stop me from using another keyboard shortcut.

But the author's code, as downloaded from the publisher's site, does just that. If you have been automatically tabbed forward to a field, you can no longer use shift+tab to go back to the field from whence you came: it will just automatically tab you forward again.

By the way, I also think it's disingenuous of the author to innocently refer to a third party library, zInherit, in chapter 4, without explicitly informing the reader that it is actually his own code (the domain is the same as noted in "About the Author" on page v). Putting two and two together however, I certainly would not trust his third party library considering his broken code and other blatant mistakes elsewhere in the book.

I am truly sorry I wasted my money on this book. And I'm astounded by others who apparently had such high expectations for this book that they cannot be objective about it. I don't know about anybody else, but I will to continue to wait for a Javascript book other than Flanagan's "Definitive Guide" that is worth buying, or perhaps just the next edition of same.

The key to knowing about this book is the word "Professional" in the title. There are other books aimed at the complete beginner that will start off with a much simpler "Here's How" approach to get you started. This book instead starts off with the history, the basic ECMAScript standards and a discussion on the Object nature of JavaScript. It's written by a working programmer to fill the real world needs of other working programmers. It does this job very well.

Further, the book is new and up to date. JavaScript is an evolving language as the web grows to demand increasing capabilities. Some of these features that now get full chapters in this book include: XML, Client-Server communications, Web Services, interacting with Plug-Ins.

The last chapter talks about the next step in the development of JavaScript, with cautions that this material is still preliminary and subject to change.

Excellent book for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript programmer.

I was lucky enough to be one of the few 'in on the ground' with this book, and watched it's development with interest. The finished result is nothing less than one of the best thought out, put together, and decisive books on Javascript that I have ever read. I now know of several people that use this book on an almost daily basis, and these range from a beginner to an advanced coder. I have used the book several times myself and have found it to be clear, detailed and informative with it's content, and professional but still easy to understand with it's delivery.

Buy it, buy it now, you will NOT REGRET it.

Well done Nicholas.

That's right! After countless books and PR about new technologies that were going to takeover the web; Nicholas C. Zakas fights back with the best JavaScript book to date. This book is much more than a copy-paste script book, it really digs deep into the language and opens up new possibilities that most developers might not have thought about.

Professional JavaScript covers it all. Unlike most programming books, Mr. Zakas actually rewards those who read the text by providing the techniques and processes behind the scripting. If you consider yourself a professional Web Developer, I would highly recommend you add this book to your library.

This is certainly the most current survey of Javascript in quite some time. That being said this book does indeed suffer from poor (technical) editing and organisation. The second chapter meanders for 55 pages though there were fine nuggets particularly regarding Javascript technology's immediate antecedents. The third chapter is interesting for its enumeration of a number of ways to instantiate object instances. I learned something at many a turn in this book. There's even some material on AJAX.

This book is the Holy Grail.

I've read pretty much every other JavaScript / DHTML book out there, and this blows them all away.

What sets this book apart from all the rest I've read, in my opinion, are the detailed sections on "Client-Server Communication", XML, and Web Services. Nicholas explains the XMLHTTP / XMLHTTPRequest objects, which enable web developers to create highly-interactive, useable web applications - much like "normal" applications.

The chapter, "Deployment Issues" is outstanding as well. Zakas gives numerous performance tips, obfuscation techniques, and describes issues that may be encountered in different browsers.

If you're looking for the latest and the greatest, this is the one.

Ok, I'm not so good at it, but I'll try my best.

The book explains since the remotest creation of JavaScript language, until the most powerful features available only in the most recent browsers.

Starting with ScriptEase, walking though LiveScript until the lastest JavaScript implementations (DOM, BOM, ECMAScript), the book provides a extremely didatic way to begin a very deep study of the resources of this wondrful language, specifying the basics of ECMAScript (on chapter 2- explaining the syntax, types and primitive valus, etc), passing though more elaborate techniques, evolving Object Oriented Programming, its usage, already existent classes (chapter 3), Inheritance (chapter 4). Then it starts to detail BOM (Browser Object Model) and the basic objects.

While detailing Document Object Model (DOM) - chapter 6 -, provides a quickly explanation about nodes hierarchy and XML.

Invading the Authomata Theory and Formal Languages, explains Regular Expressions on chapter 7 and how to use them in JavaScript.

On chapter 8, you have a brief of the Know-How part on chapter 11, 12 and 13, when Nicholas explains: Forms, Tables Ordening and Drag-and-Drop. That chapter (8), explains how to structure an efficient browsers check, covering more than 99% of usually used browsers.

Talking about a book to professionals, nothing more defeated than events manipulation and exceptions handling, that are covered inside book on chapter 9 and 14. DOM manipulations are detailed on chapter 10, approaching deeply the subject Ranges, both in IE and DOM perspective.

Something that could not be missed in a good JavaScript book, form manipulations are discussed on chapter 11.

Starting the Know-How section already mentioned, the chapter 12 comes with intention to simplify one enigma for most programmers, the Table Sorting.

The chapter 13 desmistify the traditional "drag-and-drop". On chapter 14, exceptions handling is presence with a dense approaching of this topic.

Since 1998 (W3C Recommendation), XML came as a way to struture data in an efficient form and since it, it's intensily used on Software Industries. Nicholas covers with perspicacity the whole XML-JavaScript interaction on chapter 15. Loader, error checking, on IE and Mozilla are discussed. Support of XSLT and xPath are also provided in the book.

JavaScript is a language that runs on client-side; so, it's not possible to communicate with Databases or also handle files on server. These itens are left to languages called server-side, like: PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, CF, ... Professional JavaScript for Web Developers provides a whole chapter dealing with interaction ways between these two types of languages. In this chapter (16), Nicholas describes how to deal with HTTP requests, like GET e POST. The top resource running though Internet, AJAX is discussed shortly on this chapter.

A BIG-BANG have been done to Web Services. Just a few people knows what is it and how does it work. Nicholas dedicated a whole chapter to explain about this recent subject and so commented.

Actually, technologies like Java Applets and Flash animations are used to make content more dinamic and to increment the site-user interaction. Resources like these need plugins installed on browser. On chapter 18, it's approached this interaction of JavaScript and plugins.

Before the last book chapter, security techniques, internacionalization and optimizations are approached.

Finishing the book with golden key, the book covers the future of the language, I mean, the ways that it could probably follow.



As a reviewer, and a massive book reader, I can say that Nicholas' book is the best one I've notice about JavaScript for intermediate to advanced programmers. It's an honor to be part of such a good coverage book Professional JavaScript for Web Developer has. Nicholas made his daily lessons very good and probe us that his didactic and skills are perfect.
Now, if anyone asks me for an excellent JavaScript book, they'll listen: Professional JavaScript for Web Developer, by Nicholas C. Zackas.

I had the pleasure of reading this book earlier in the year. Simply stated: It is the best JavaScript book I have read. Zakas knows his stuff and has no problem clearly explaining the subject matter. "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers" quickly replaced "The JavaScript Bible" as my go-to book when I need my memory refreshed. Awesome book!