Book review: DHTML Utopia
February 13, 2005
DHTML Utopia Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM
First thing I have to say is that I like their (I guess you can call it,) catch-phrase:
‘Create Killer Websites using the power of modern Javascript’
🙂
The pros:
- In the introduction, a section with the title: ‘Whither XHTML’ – here we see Real-World thinking. Basically the author explains why using XHTML does not make sense now.
- Chapter 1 is a good overview of code (HTML, CSS) and how it should be applied in web design today.
- Chapter 2: A good intro the DOM – but it moves fast.
- Chapter 8: A cool section on XMLHTTP: XMLHTTP is a way to ‘talk’ to the server via JavaScript, that makes for a Flash like exchange of data between a web page and server – that means no page refresh.
The cons:
- After chapter 2, I started to fall asleep – and I’m a big nerd!
- Not a knock on the book itself, but most of the stuff described in the book is not worth using (most of the time,) since about 10% of the people out there have JavaScript shut off. That means you can’t count on your JavaScript for anything – so all the JavaScript you use has to be non-essential.
Conclusion:
If you know how to program, and you want to get into the cutting edge DOM scripting world, this is a reasonably good book.
You can read about more JavaScript books here.
CIAO,
Stefan Mischook
