The Complete Reference - JavaScript 2nd Edition - Review Part 1

A couple days ago I received my copy of this book from Osborne/McGraw-Hill. (X)HTML/CSS/JavaScript (a.k.a “DHTML“) isn't going away any time soon so I felt now was as good a time as any to start further educating myself on one of the most used languages of the web - JavaScript. I've previously read a couple of Thomas Powell's web development books and I really like his style of writing. It's clear and concise and he rarely leaves pertinent information uncovered. This book has been no exception so far. I've read through the first 4 chapters and it's already taught me a few things about JavaScript.

This book really targets a wide audience too. The first chapters discuss not only beginning JavaScript concepts, but beginning programming concepts. The nomenclature, topics like variable scope, weak types, data type conversion, event handlers, operators, expressions, etc. It even attempts (briefly) to give the reader a quick primer on objects and how to use them with JavaScript. I've not skimmed -- but quickly read -- these first chapters as there wasn't a whole lot to learn for me.

I'll follow up with a review of further chapters tomorrow on Functions, Objects, and Regular Expressions. A good read so far - albeit a little bit of a bible/tome-sized book.