[Gllug] JavaScript books

[Mark Preston]

T. Clarke wrote:-
 >I have a feeling that 'javascript' embedded into the web form may 
 >provide the
 >answers.   If that is the case, then I should appreciate some 
 >recommendations
 >as to a good book to buy.  By the way, most of my books to date are 
 >O'Reilly
 >which generally seems to be a good publisher.

I really like JavaScript and have found Nick Heinle's "Designing 
Web-pages with JavaScript", "JavaScript in easy steps" by Mike McGrath 
and "Instant JavaScript" by Nigel McFarlane all useful books to read.
I agree with what others such as Wulf, Bruce, Tethys and Liam have 
already written in response to your posting.

I would also like to add that at present there seems to be a move away 
from client-side logic, such as that provided by JavaScript routines, to 
server-side logic, such as PHP, ASP, JSP, Python etc..(yes I know you 
can have server side JavaScript, but it's not that common).

There are very good reasons for this and they are partly in response to
open-source software:

* It frees the client browser from the responsibility of correctly
processing the JavaScript code.
   Indeed, some browsers do not have a JavaScript capability, or their
capability has been disabled by their paranoid user.

* It also avoids the discrepancies between various browser versions and 
implementations such as
the variation between Internet Explorer on the Mac and Windows platform, 
and Netscape/Mozilla on Linux or Windows.

  * It absolutely absolves responsibility from the operating system but only
asks that its browser can display simple HTML output.

* The increasing range of devices
able to access Internet content may not always have the capability to
provide client-side processing logic. So the Web browser on a PDA need only
display HTML and any interactive logic must be processed on the server.


  * It is now taking a lot less time for messages to be sent to the 
server and
get  feedback compared to a few years ago

  *It helps keep the source codes secret from the viewer.

In my view any serious use of JavaScript is probably best backed up by 
some server side coding. PHP, for instance.
There are also plenty of good websites to visit to pick up scripts that 
may help you out. www.javascriptsource.com and www.irt.org spring to mind.
Best of luck,
Mark Preston



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