Getting Good With JavaScript: New Rockable Book (Plus a Free Sample!)

Getting Good With JavaScript: New Rockable Book (Plus a Free Sample!)

on Jul 6th 2011 with 33 comments

You’ve been writing HTML and CSS for a while now, and are pretty comfy with it. Scratch that: you’re uber-comfy with it. And you’re ready to move on to the next level. But that means learning JavaScript! Yikes!

Learning JavaScript isn’t as hard as you might think. However, there’s a bit of a problem: there’s a lot of bad information out there. And how are you—the HTML and CSS expert who knows nothing about JavaScript—supposed to discern the good from the bad?

You Needn’t do it Alone!

In Getting Good With JavaScript, I’ll quickly take you from novice to advanced novice! “Wait, what?” you respond. Yes, advanced novice. Let me explain:

There’s more to learn about JavaScript than anyone could put into a single book. This book doesn’t get anywhere close to attempting that. It doesn’t even try to cover everything the normal JavaScript-for-beginners book covers. Instead, I’ll give you a solid foundation by clearly explaining all the basic syntax. Once that settles, we’ll go on to covering several important concepts, features, and best practices.

Book Cover
eBook (PDF, ePub, and Kindle) and Screencasts – $19 – Buy Now
Print Book, eBooks, and Screencasts – $24 – Buy Now

Best Practices?

. . . that reminds me: I’ve attempted to make this book pure as a blank text editor. You won’t find any bad practices or bad features (gasp! They do exist.) outlined herein, not even for the sake of completeness. As a beginner, you can be sure that everything you’re learning is considered best practice by the industry heavyweights.

So, no, this book isn’t the JavaScript book to rule them all. And that’s not the goal. If this book takes you from not knowing a thing about JavaScript to being comfortable with writing (relatively) simple code and ready to learn intermediate and advanced techniques from the plethora of awesome sources available on the web, it will have done its job.

What You’re Getting

  • Chapter 1: Getting Started
  • Chapter 2: The Basics
  • Chapter 3: More Basics
  • Chapter 4: More Concepts and Best Practices
  • Chapter 5: Working with HTML

It’s all packed into about 140 pages; plus, it comes with almost 6 hours of screencasts, and over 100 example files.

The Official Pitch

Ever wanted to spice up your websites with a dash of JavaScript, but not known where to start? In Getting Good with JavaScript, author Andrew Burgess breaks programming in JavaScript down into easy, straight-forward principles and practices.

This book will introduce you to important programming concepts, show you how to write your first scripts, and make you comfortable with JavaScript code. You’ll learn

  • The basics of types, variables, and operators
  • Best practices for efficient coding
  • Testing and optimizing your JavaScript
  • Interacting with HTML elements

Andrew Burgess will help you get past the learning curve and get you Getting Good with JavaScript.

eBook (PDF, ePub, and Kindle) and Screencasts – $19 – Buy Now
Print Book, eBooks, and Screencasts – $24 – Buy Now

Sample Pages

Nothing beats trying before buying, right? You can check out some sample pages for absolutely free right here, right now.

About the Author

Well, you guys all know me, right? I’m a staff writer here at Nettuts+. I’m also the Web Development Reviewer on the Tuts+ Marketplace. I’ve been working with the web for 5-6 years now, and prefer JavaScript and Ruby over anything else.

 
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I'm a Canadian web developer, a staff writer at Nettuts+, and the author of the Rockable Press eBook Getting Good With Git. I prefer JavaScript and Ruby. Soon, I'll be doing some writing on my personal site; of course, you can follow me on Twitter.  

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  • waste

    Thank you, Andrew! Already bought your book, gonna dig into.

  • Valerio

    Sounds interesting, but not really any info there in the Table of Contents…

    Chapter 1: Getting Started
    Chapter 2: The Basics
    Chapter 3: More Basics
    Chapter 4: More Concepts and Best Practices

    What specifically is in the book? Do you cover frameworks?

  • http://taylorhutchison.com Taylor Hutchison

    Definitely going to buy this. Rockable books are very good. This seems like a great addition to the line-up. Can not wait to read it.

  • http://www.футболмастер.рф/ alex

    Great. I’ve been searching for such thing. Combining screencast and a book is a brilliant idea. And its relatively cheap. Thanks.

  • Simon Davies

    Looks good, but seems there is a download issue with the amazon S3 system, get the loading icon then nothing.. Was looking forward to reading this tonight :-)

  • Juan Carlos Rois

    Andrew, Congratulations on your new book.
    You are the kind of developer I would like to become.
    I will buy the book as a show of gratitude for all of your hard work, and specially because you took the time to personally help me about a year ago with one of your tutorials.

    Many thanks and keep up the good work.

    • Juan Carlos Rois

      Bought it! Awesome!

  • baiquni

    Thanks for this..is there any CSS book for novice ? he he he … I need .. really…

  • Gotti

    Is it possible to buy the paperback version with Paypal ?

    I prefer physical products. But i don’t have a credit card. So amazon ain’t an option for me.

  • Gotti

    Damn, i already bought the digital version, I just couldn’t wait . :P

  • Stoian Kirov

    Yeahh!
    GREAH!!!!

  • http://www.jeffadams.co.uk Jeff Adams

    If this is even half as great as the WordPress book I’m buying it.

  • Oliver

    Your product could not have come at a better time. This is my last summer before college starts and I wanted to learn javascript. What better place than from nettuts? W3C didn’t seem that helpful and other products are quite expensive….. Hopefully I can become good enough to be hired as a freelancer next year mainly using javascript+ html+ css.

    Thank you!

  • Charbs

    Hi Andrew,

    Really excited about this. Just a question first before i commit.
    I Bought “The JavaScript Bible” (by Danny Goodman) a couple of months ago, and being an absolute beginner i read about a third of it and kinda stopped, i learnt a lot of things, i can write a couple of simple functions etc, but i still wouldn’t say i’m anything more than a beginner. Do you think your book would benefit me eventhough i’ve come across the syntax and the simple stuff before?

    Thanks
    Charbs

  • http://www.tabletpcunion.com tabletpcunion

    Good post. Good book. I’ll probably buy it. Thank u for the introductions.

  • http://www.scriptedpixels.co.uk Kam Banwait

    Awesome and perfect timing, just what I need to take the next step from being a junior to a junior + lol :)

  • http://www.derby-webdesign.co.uk derbywebdesign

    Wow looks like a great book for me to start learning JS properly. I’ll deff be making a purchase =)

  • Daquan Wright

    Yep, Douglas Crockford himself states that most books on JS are bad and so is a lot of the online stuff. This is especially true because JS’s inner working are quite different form other C-style languages. I look forward to buying this soon. :)

  • Joaquim Saavedra

    If I buy the print book, you don’t give a PDF? If you give it, it would be great because I could start reading while I wait for the print book. :P

    Cheers

  • Delv

    I read the sample, well honestly this book is useless for those who write js before. The content just too simple that it just waste of time to read it, quit disappoint with rock able press

    • http://andrewburgess.ca Andrew Burgess
      Author

      I completely agree: the book wasn’t written for anyone who has written JavaScript before. I wrote it with the absolute beginner in mind, and therefore, I had to start with the most basic of basics.

  • steven

    Sorry to nitpick but I am just going through the book and have found a couple of small errors:

    At the end of example 3.5

    alert(sum1); //2

    Is wrong. it actual outputs 3. Which had me a bit confused when I read it. But luckily the author has included some example html files in which this example works correctly.

    Also found a typo on page 44. “you should now about”

    Apart from this, the book is a really excellent introduction to JavaScript. I’m really enjoying it and learning a lot. As a beginner I like the pace of the book and the author is good at explaining concepts in a clear and concise way.

    Also an improvement would have been to have included a simple index.html in the examples folder that links to each example. A small matter, but would have made browsing the examples much easier.

    Still, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone starting out with JavaScript. For example someone like myself with only HTML and CSS experience.

  • Jackson

    I don’t usually comment. Looks like it could be interesting for me, being an absolute begin at javascripting.

    One thing I was surprised by – grammatical errors in the first paragraph of the book?

    “This introductory chapter will get you acquainted the subject under the microscope. Let’s roll!”

  • picasso

    great. try another multimedia video book for wordpress theme.

  • http://andrewburgess.ca Andrew Burgess
    Author

    Thanks for all the great comments!

    Steven and Jackson: Thanks for bringing those to my attention. Believe me, both I and the editors at Rockable read the text several times, but I guess we didn’t catch everything. :) I’ll keep track of those and see what we can do about ‘em. Thanks!

    • Alex

      Hi Andrew,

      I also saw a typo on page 9 in the second bullet point. In the parentheses, it should say “of course” instead of “or course.”

      Alex

  • http://www.javascriptreplace.com Replace

    Would the book be good for people who already know JavaScript? Sort of like a reference for those well versed in it?

  • Chris Sanders

    Thanks Andrew! I am half way through it already. I am still not completely clear on “this”.

  • Bython

    Thanks for this awesome book, I’ll start reading it today.

  • Din

    Bought the book from Amazon. Can I get the ebook in the meantime?

  • Omar

    cant afford it thats around 3k in Kenyan shillings and thats hard to come by.

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