January 23, 2008

The Art and Science of JavaScript

There is a big problem with JavaScript books: they are either just not sexy or lack in technical detail. For years we've either had the hard-core references or the "teach yourself how to make blinking menus in 24 hours" kind of books on the subject.

This is partly because of the diverse nature of the audience: everybody who works as a web developer is sooner or later asked to write or implement some JavaScript. However not many people are dedicated to really dive into the world's most misunderstood programming language - as Douglas Crockford put it.

Therefore books historically either tried to explain every detail of the language or made sure to give the reader some quick to apply solutions that don't necessarily need much effort on the part of the implementer.

When Sitepoint approached me about the Art and Science of JavaScript I was not only holding a drink (as it was the @media2007 afterparty) but they had just released a CSS book with a similar title. I didn't really want to write another book chapter but they managed to convince me when I saw the lineup of authors for it. A few weeks later we had the topics and the authors nailed down:

• Ara Pehlivanian (an up and coming writer on JavaScript, remember this name - I know it is hard) writes in "fun with tables" about a script that turns an HTML table into a sortable table widget that also allows for dragging columns around.
• I talk about how to create a client-side badge using JSON data from REST APIs without adding extra overhead to the loading time of your site
• Cameron Adams writes about a CANVAS solution for graphs and pie charts
• Michael Mahemoff tells the reader how to debug and profile with Firebug
• Dan Webb opens JavaScript's hood and pokes around in the engine with metaprogramming
• James Edwards shows you how to create an accessible 3D maze with JavaScript and CSS slants
• Simon Willison explains how to create a quick mashup of Google Maps and Flickr

All in all this covers a lot of interesting topics and on the sly tells you about tricks and techniques of JavaScript you might not have known about before. The mix of applying JavaScript to create an effect, access and use APIs, details about the language itself and how to tame it with browser tools is a good one and should speak to both the hard-core JavaScript fans and the people who want to see what the language helps them to achieve and in James' case push the limits of browsers.

One very nice detail is also that the book comes in full colour. You can get all the information you need and download a sample chapter on its information page.

Christian Heilmann

Posted at January 23, 2008 11:46 AM

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