1. Designing with JavaScript, 2nd
Edition by Bill Pena
Great For Beginners
Designing with JavaScript opens up a whole new world to Web-design
artists, especially those making the leap from a print-design background.
Many people liken Web design to print design, but there is nothing
interactive about a printed page. Web pages, however, can be completely
dynamic, different from moment to moment and responsive to the reader.
The best way to take advantage of this is through JavaScript.Eleven
chapters and four appendices cover the basics to the complex, from
extracting and validating information using forms to creating rotating
images to using DHTML for animation. The first half covers basic yet
important issues like an introduction to the syntax of the language, browser
detection, setting up forms, and controlling frames and windows. Filled with
examples, screen shots, and links to more examples and info, these
chapters build a solid foundation for the second half of the book.Dynamic
images, rollovers, using cookies, and creating interactive features using
DHTML are some of the features covered later in the book, with numerous
practical examples. These chapters are invaluable for the learning
designer, as nearly every feature is practically required on a contemporary
Web site. The appendices include a handy JavaScript guide to the
language, including syntax, handlers, an object guide, and style
properties.Not everything can be handled (yet) through the available
WYSIWYG editors, making this book an invaluable reference and one to
keep at your fingertips. --Mike Caputo
Most JavaScript books force you to slog through reams of reference
material before you get to the good stuff. This book is not one of them.
Nick Heinle, former WebReference expert and WebCoder wunderkind, and
Bill Pena have updated Heinles first edition into OReillys patented Web
Studio style intro to JavaScript.
Aimed at beginning to intermediate scripters, DWJ2 skips the dry stuff and
dives right into practical real-world examples of useful scripts you can
easily add to your own pages. Everything from simple descriptive links and

2. remotes, to frames, form validation and arrays, through sniffing, rollovers,
personalization through cookies, and more advanced topics are covered.
A brief DHTML chapter follows, with some simplified examples of drop-
down menus (non-hierarchical), sliding tabs, and scrolling layers with
clipping, useful for news feeds.
The advanced chapter covers object-oriented scripting and shows how to
create a quiz to test your readers. Relational select menus (2-level)
illustrate using two-dimensional arrays nicely.
I especially enjoyed the section on cross-browser style objects, where the
authors demonstrate the use of Netscapes xbStyle object. xbStyle is a
simple abstraction layer that removes the complexity of accessing style
properties. Using xbStyle you can grab, hide, and move layers without
worrying about implementation details of specific browsers.
The coolest thing about xbStyle is the layer grabbing technique. xbStyle
implements a W3C-like document.getElementById() method for 4.0
browsers! For these older browsers, xbStyle redefines this method, to
make its use seamless for scripters manipulating layers (DIVs). This
example demonstrates the leveraging power of a well-executed API. This
book is a good intro by example to JavaScript.
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