A Software Engineer Learns HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery First Edition

Echoing some of the other reviewers, I've been a successful professional software engineer writing large-scale desktop applications for a little over 15 years now, and that's the perspective from which I'm writing this review.I made an initial foray into web development back in 1996/1997, but the lack of available information combined with browser compatibility issues and the technology's overall immaturity left such a bad taste in my mouth that I walked away and never thought I would look back. In recent years, however, the trend has become increasingly clear: Web applications are taking over at an increasingly rapid pace, and purely-desktop engineers strongly risk being left in the dust. Based on that perception, I've been revisiting web development for the past couple of months, and have been frustrated to find that most online resources either assume that you're an absolute beginner (i.e. "hello world" is explained over the course of 15 paragraphs, and thus concludes the tutorial) or someone who has already been using the underlying technologies for years and is just looking for a reminder (i.e. leaving out steps because it's assumed that "everybody knows that...", forgetting that it's supposed to be a tutorial).Although I'm only 2/3 of the way through this book, I'm sufficiently impressed to give it a 5-star review because:- The book assumes that you already have some level of comfort with programming languages and basic constructs (i.e. variables, looping, conditionals, etc.) and so doesn't burn 100+ pages rehashing those to death like many intro-level books do, but it also doesn't assume that you already have expert-level knowledge of the technologies covered - for example, the first few chapters had great value to me since I come from a background of statically-typed, semantically-strict languages, so JavaScript just seems bizarre to me with its dynamic/'duck' typing, functional constructs, etc., but the early chapters really helped me come to terms with those concepts. It was interesting that these were 'intro-level' chapters yet I kept uncovering nuggets of understanding that were new to me. Better yet, every few pages I would run across a concept that I had seen in existing JS code yet struggled to understand 'in the wild', and *poof* there was a crystal-clear explanation of the concept or previously unknown-to-me convention that suddenly made things snap into focus.- One of my favorite features of the early chapters is the coverage of Chrome dev tools - I was familiar with using them to fiddle around with CSS/DOM inspection on a basic level, but had no idea of the power available from the JS console. The early examples in this book rapidly brought me up to speed with this tool and saved me a great deal of time over my prior experimental workflow of 'update a .js file, reload in browser, pray that it works, try again if it doesn't'.- At the risk of sounding like Goldilocks, this book's pace is just right - neither sluggish nor overwhelming. Dane's presentation of the concepts is logical, well-considered, and well-presented, but it's easy to go through a chapter and feel like you've learned something meaningful without feeling drained from information overload.- As mentioned before, I had a phenomenally bad experience trying to learn JS in the late 1990s, and I've been similarly frustrated trying to learn the new tools like jQuery using web-based resources because they're mostly boilerplate snippets with minimal additional context, few references, often outdated, and make various assumptions about the reader's experience level. In contrast, this book presents its information in layers, giving enough background to understand the examples, combined with sufficient context that a motivated reader can rapidly expand their knowledge with targeted internet searches. That said, subsequent chapters build on the prior content without assuming that the reader has performed additional research, making this a truly self-contained guide - if you do explore 'outside the box', then you just gain more understanding of the material.Make no mistake - this book is not targeted at non-programmers trying to break into the field - that market is already oversaturated and there are hundreds of '099'-level books available from other publishers. Instead, this book fills an incredibly valuable niche, serving people who already have a solid foundation in software engineering but want to quickly learn a new language/framework (and corresponding paradigms) from a consistent, reliable source without wasting time skipping over multiple chapters of "this is how foreach differs from do/while" or filtering through hundreds of dubious web tutorials - I guess I would call it the 'beginner with similar professional experience' market, and this book fills that niche soundly for the HTML5/JavaScript/jQuery segment.In the end, this book helped fill in the gaps in my knowledge and gave me the tools I need in order to take my existing expertise and transition it to web development!

Book explains very well the power behind these technologies and how you can use them in real Web projects. I liked the way it explains these technologies from the software engineering point of view rather than from a pure coder perspective.

You have to learn how to use this book.It's an instructional course, not a reference.When I first purchased this, I read the first four chapters and then got bogged down in the intro to Javascript in chapter five. I felt Dane was tooting his horn a little showing you all these obscure features/bugs in the language. I barely got through the chapter and then put the book down as it just didn't seem that useful to me. Chapter six was on jQuery, in which was my primary interest anyway, so I decided to pick the book back up and plow ahead. Something clicked. I realized I was reading the book wrong. I was trying to treat the book like a reference rather than a course on application programming. I swallowed hard, cleared my desk, created a project called "tasks" on my web server and started typing the code into my editor. I have just today finished working through all the code enhancements in jQuery in chapter five. This has given me a pretty solid understanding of why so many people rave about jQuery. The really great thing is, now I have all this code that I can steal later on when I need to build a table template or serialize a form. The "tasks" application Dane has you work through is perfect, not too complex but just detailed enough to demonstrate concepts that are real-world. I'm loving it! It's better than taking a class where the instructor crams a bunch of code at you in three days that you can't possibly digest.I'm really weak in front-end programming and this book (course) is really bringing me up to speed.

Great book and outstanding value! Having read the majority of this book, I now understand how to combine HTML5 markup, JavaScript, jQuery, and indexedDB to create online/offline apps. The author's writing style is clear and concise, which made learning from this book a pleasure.I've yet to read this book's chapters on file storage, AJAX, and web sockets, yet I've read enough to be satisfied with my purchase.I wouldn't recommend this book to a novice programmer as this book assumes a general knowledge of HTML markup, object oriented programming (oop), and oop design patterns.This book's best features:> Excellent lesson on JavaScript - even better than the JavaScript guide on Mozilla's web site (though please do check out the Mozilla Developer web site -- it's a quality resource)> Learn how different web technologies can interact with each other to create something great, while using good coding practices (DRY, separation of concerns, layered development> "Learn by doing" - exposes the reader to many web technologies while building a simple (but not trivial) app

Es un libro para aquellos que tengan conocimientos básicos sobre html, javascript y/o jquery. Con este libro uno puede profundizar un poco más en la comprensión de éstos. El autor nos guía con un ejemplo de aplicación web que hace uso de HTML, JavaScript, jQuery y CSS, además de algunas librerías interesantes. Recomiendo ampliamente este libro.

Este não é um manual ou livro de iniciação nas tecnologias citadas.Não vai ensinar fundamentos de HTML5, nem JavaScript e nem jQuery.Sua grande qualidade, encontra-se em dirigir o leitor, tomando como base estas 3 tecnologias, em um modelo de desenvolvimento moderno, focado em técnicas de rich-client com uso de JavaScript e jQuery.O autor, no decorrer de sua obra, desenvolve uma aplicação simples (uma lista de tarefas) que faz uso dos ferramentais citados, tendo como ênfase, a construção de uma aplicação web, que funciona offline, inclusive com persistência dos dados.Muito bem escrito, bem codificado, fácil de seguir e entender. Recomendo a todos que gostam de desenvolvimento client-side e àqueles que desejam aprender este paradigma.

Ich habe mir das Buch als Ergänzung für mein Informatik-Studium gekauft.Für den Preis kann man nichts falsch machen. Das Buch ersetzt zwar keine großen Referenzwerke, jedoch bietet es einen sehr guten Einstieg in das Thema. Der JavaScript-Teil hätte etwas ausführlicher sein können, da mein Dozent kein jQuery nutzt. Trotzdem kann ich das Buch jedem empfehlen, da es inhaltlich mehr bietet, als andere Bücher zu diesem Preis.

It is not meant to be an exhaustive coverage of these 3 subjects - HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery. But it does a nice job at what the book sets out to do. Very well written.

Es un libro bueno escrito por alguien que parece que sabe de lo que habla. Sin embargo, es limitado en su alcance y posible público. No es una introducción desde cero ya que da muchas cosas por sabidas. Por ejemplo, no esperes aprender a usar HTML5 si no conoces bien versiones anteriores del lenguaje ya que sólo se comentan las novedades y sin profundizar mucho. Tampoco es un libro que cubra todo lo posible de ninguna de las herramientas/lenguajes que toca (cada uno de estos tiene dedicado libros de muchas más páginas que este, así que sería un milagro resumir tanto).En resumen, el libro desarrolla un ejemplo de una mini-aplicación analizando en detalle la manera correcta de abordarla con un lenguaje tan difícil de utilizar ordenadamente como JavaScript e introduciendo muchas de las mejoras que permite la API de HTML5.Su principal virtud es que constituye una buena iniciación al buen estilo de programación con JavaScript/JQuery. Su principal debilidad es que se deja muchísimas cosas en el tintero. Recomendable para programadores que quieran empezar a familiarizarse con JavaScript sin arrastrar vicios de otros lenguajes del ámbito puramente imperativo y orientado a objetos y que cuenten con nociones básicas de HTML dinámico.