JavaScript Pocket Reference Author: David Flanagan Pages: 89 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates ISBN: 1-56592-521-1 Summary: A useful, concise reference for anyone who uses JavaScript often. Review Date: 14 Feb, 2003

The JavaScript Pocket Reference is a handy little volume providing a concise reference to many aspects of JavaScript. The volume under review here is the first edition, and O'Reilly has now released a second edition, so some of my review here may be slightly out-of-date.

The book begins with a brief overview of JavaScript language features, including basic syntax, variables, data types, expressions, operators, and regular expression usage in JavaScript. A few examples are scattered throughout this overview, but don't expect anything extensive. If you're familiar with other programming languages, you shouldn't have too much trouble following along. Short sections follow on how to embed JavaScript in HTML, the Client-Side Object Heriarchy (which provides a helpful diagram of how the various objects fit together), security constraints involved with JavaScript, working with windows & frames, the various HTML form elements, and the event types supported by JavaScript. The overview ends with a list of global properties and functions available in JavaScript.

The rest of the book is a JavaScript Object reference. Each entry in the reference provides basic information on properties, inheritance information, methods, and event handlers for each of the JavaScript objects. In many cases a synopsis of the object's usage is provided. Each object method listed gives arguments expected, if any, and usually a one-liner descrbing its function. Similarly a sentence or two is provided for each object property listed. The author also briefly indicates browser compatibility issues that may exist for certain objects.

The keyword for much of the content here is 'concise'. Most of the comments on properties and methods in the object reference are very brief, but provide the basics of what you need to know. If you don't know much about JavaScript this book probably wont be too helpful and you'll want to look for tutorials and introductory texts elsewhere. But if you are familiar with JavaScript, and use it on a regular basis, this book will likely come in handy when you need to need to be reminded, for example, what methods are available for manipulating a JavaScript Date object. Essentially, it's good for remembering what's available, but if you need further discussion or examples of usage, you'll want to find something more comprehensive.

Overall rating: 8/10