Beginning JavaScript 4th Edition

Whoever wrote this book took absolutely no care to think about the audience it was supposedly written for: the total beginner. Or if the author did think of people like me, he has no idea how to introduce new topics and reinforce them effectively.Examples in this book are completely useless and outdated. For instance, the entire first chapter teaches you how to trigger annoying popup alert boxes, a feature that any modern website would be laughed off of the Web for employing. In the chapter on forms, the first example shows you how to write three sentences to a web page. Nothing actually to do with forms, lists, checkboxes, interactivity, you name it.People learn best if you give them examples to work through that have actual relevance to the work they'll be doing with the programming language. It doesn't help to learn something with a "ground-up" approach if the things you learn on the ground seem irrelevant and useless to your actual day-to-day programming needs. I grew frustrated trying to work through the examples in this book only to find the end result so counterintuitive and inefficient that I started to question why I was even learning JavaScript. Do I really need to slog through two pages of code to make a site display the words "Hello World"? How about approaching the topic from a practical approach, using examples that have actual relevance to modern sites?The Kindle version of this book doesn't help matters. Absolutely no formatting or breaks for logical page cutoffs, a poorly (and barely) indexed table of contents, typographical errors and inconsistencies in the code, and so on -- what exactly am I paying for here?I gave the book two stars because it seems like the original author has a sincere desire to teach this subject. He just didn't do a very effective job of it.

I bought this book and am right in the middle of it right now. I have to say, the content is very good. However, the number one issue I've noticed is that using the Kindle version, none of the formatting of the example code in the book has carried over. Nothing is indented. There will be an example in the book like the following:"Incorrect Number of Closing BracesIn the following code, you define a function and then call it. However, there's a deliberate mistake. See if you can spot where it is.function myFunction(){x = 1;y = 2;if (x <= y){if (x== y{alert("x equals y");}}myFunction();This is why formatting your code is important - you'll have a much easier time spotting errors such as this:function myFunction(){x = 1;y = 2;if (x <= y){if (x== y{alert("x equals y");}}myFunction();Now you can see that the ending curly brace of the function is missing. When there are a lot of if, for, or do while statements, it's easy to have too many or too few closing braces. This type of problem is much easier to spot with formatted code."Yeah--obviously, here, the second code example was supposed to be properly formatted so the user can see how indenting the code will allow you to see missing end braces and things. The problem is that none of the code in the Kindle version ACTUALLY IS properly formatted, so I have no idea how the code should look. I mean, I have an idea because I've worked with code before, but examples like this are completely useless. Wish I had known before I bought this on the Kindle.

I purchased the kindle edition for this book when the local college textbook store was unable to fulfill the order after 6 weeks. It has become extremely frustrating to use, the code does not work for every tutorial. There are typo's in the code as well. An example, in chapter 3 the book shows code as br / and does not work but when I get the book code from my instructor the code reads as br and works fine. What the heck???? a / in the wrong place is a big deal when it comes to writing code, especially for a beginner.

One of the best Javascript books out there in my opinon....this was the fourth edition I believe so. It helped me out throughout my courses. Highly suggested picking this up especially the new ones.

This book is very easy to understand even you don't have knowledge of any programming language. I'll recommend this book for UI developers.