Comments for Where do you go for JavaScript help? (http://www.insideria.com/2008/01/where-do-you-go-for-javascript.html)

Where do you go for JavaScript help?

2008-01-23T14:16:41Z

As I mentioned in my introduction, I'm kind of a newbie to the RIA world, and especially JavaScript. I felt like I was quite good at it "back in the day", but I'm way rusty now. The language itself isn't too difficult, but there are constructs and language elements that I find confusing. The DOM (Document Object Model) is also a bit deeper than it used to be. So this leads to the question - where do you go for learning and reference material for JavaScript?

Back when I used to do more JavaScript work, I remember using two main resources. One was the documentation at Netscape. The other was the famous "Rhino" book, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.

I took a quick look at the JavaScript resources at O'Reilly. The Definite Guide is now in it's fifth edition, which isn't surprising. It was one of the most clear and simple resources to use. But I also see the last edition was published in 2006, almost an eternity in Internet years. Is anyone using this book for development today?

I see many other new books, including an Application Cookbook and a JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook. I'm a big fan of the cookbook idea (and fyi, I'm the creator and one of the maintainers of the ColdFusion Cookbook) so I'm considering picking up these two books. Anyone read them and care to comment?

And what about web sites? I've found that for most of my Google searches, W3Schools seems to be the first response and while I like the site, it feels a bit cluttered to be my preferred reference. Other searches return matches o MSDN, which for a long time was just plain flakey in Firefox. As for Netscape.com, the docs I used to use seem to have morphed into the developer docs at Mozilla. Maybe I'm too slow - but I find their docs hard to navigate and confusing. Last time I went there I was trying to find DOM info on the select tag. I gave up after 10 minutes of searching.

So - what am I doing wrong?

Comment from Andrea Hill on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T15:27:17Z

One name you NEED to know: Jeremy Keith. He wrote "DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model " and "Bulletproof AJAX". I heard him at @Media a few years back, he knows his stuff but presents it in a digestable format.

Good luck!

Comment from biou on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T16:17:40Z

I am in your situation, and I just bought two books : "PPK on javascript" (PPK, quirksmode.org) and "pro javascript techniques" (John Resig, jquery, ...) IMHO they are two really good books to re-learn modern javascript.

Comment from Marc Christie on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T16:23:35Z

I'm a big fan of the MDC (Mozilla Developer Connection). I usually don't navigate their site, so I haven't encountered the problem you mention. But if I google on some JavaScript issue and see MDC in the search results, I'll go there first.

Also, check out Douglas Crockford videos on YUI theater.

Comment from Raymond Camden on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T16:33:30Z

So Marc - maybe you can help me learn the site a bit better. Taking my example of getting the DOM info for a select box, how would you find that on MDC? I'm probably just being stupid and missing an obvious linkage.

Comment from Brian Swartzfager on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T23:44:11Z

Hi, Ray,

I second Andrea's recommendation of the "DOM Scripting" book by Jeremy Keith and biou's suggestions. Before I started using jQuery, the quirksmode site was my main on-line JavaScript reference: I spent a lot of time in the W3C DOM Compatibility part of his site (http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/compatibility.html).

When I just need a quick reminder on the syntax of a generic JavaScript function, I tend to pull out the JavaScript cheat sheet produced by VisiBone (visibone.com). I see they have a new edition for 2008...may need to check that out myself. :)

Comment from Raymond Camden on 2008-01-23

2008-01-24T02:02:53Z

Wow, the VisiBone stuff is pretty darn nice.

Comment from Brian Swartzfager on 2008-01-24

2008-01-24T15:01:15Z

I love my VisiBone cheat sheets, even though they don't always have the exact answer I'm looking for.

Maybe we can convince them to do an RIA line of cheat sheets (ActionScript, Flex, AIR, ColdFusion, etc.).

Comment from Andy Beeching on 2008-01-26

2008-01-26T17:58:27Z

The cheat sheets at www.ilovejackdaniels.com are very useful, as for the definitive JavaScript resource, well, there isn't one, but Douglas Crockford recommends the Rhino Book, and the last few from Apress (Pro JavaScript, Accelerated DOM Scripting, and JS Design Patterns) are all written by top developers including Jon Snook whose a contributer to this very site... :-)