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Title: Using Dynamic Html (Special Edition Using...) by David Gulbransen, Kenrick Rawling, Kenrick Rawlings ISBN: 0-7897-1482-5 Publisher: Que Pub. Date: October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.99

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Average Customer Rating: 2.67 (9 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Annoying Flaws, But Still Worth Reading
Comment: This book has a number of annoying problems, which makes it hard to recommend. As other reviewers have noted, it only covers Internet Explorer. This is somewhat understandable, as the implementation of DHTML in Netscape is rudimentary, and writing cross-platform DHTML certainly isn't a case of just showing the Netscape syntax. Nonetheless, the authors tend to take the view that DHTML is a Microsoft technology, which is only partly true. The text is also rather anti-Netscape in tone. For example, they accuse Netscape of using strongarm tactics to get their technology turned into a standard. (Of course, Microsoft never does anything like that!)

Stylistically, the first three chapters are tiresomely redundant and uninformative, and the authors have the annoying habit of returning to a subject discussed earlier as if you've never heard of it.

Technically, there are a number of annoying inaccuracies. For example, several times, they use the incorrect style sheet syntax they earlier warned you not to use. They also "introduce" the DIV tag at one point, despite the fact that it has been used in the last three examples. Then they don't use it in the next example!

The book has a number of straight-out errors. For example, they state that you need to use relative positioning when dynamically shifting elements. This is incorrect, and explains why the drag script they develop later doesn't work. They are also wrong about the direction the z-index goes in. They also keep applying the ID attribute to the SPAN tag for some reason. This doesn't work, and produces strange runtime errors.

Moreover, the book is somewhat out-of-date, and applies to DHTML as implemented in IE4. Some of the techniques discussed have since been superceded by DHTML behaviours in IE 5, although they do still work.

Lastly, the supporting website is long gone, and the Que website has no mention of the book.

So was there nothing good about it? Well, if you fix the bugs noted above, the scripts work pretty well. Also, it was only because I read the book that I was able to identify the errors, so I suppose I learnt quite a lot. It is quite good as a DHTML primer, has some neat projects in the back, and has a fairly good intro to client-side data-binding (but doesn't discuss Remote Data Services).

I don't regret reading it or buying it. But I think there are probably better books around by now.

Rating: 4
Summary: Internet Explorer 4 Book
Comment: This book is a great book for someone who has no previous knowledge of JavaScript and DHTML. You will -if you read it, of course- learn in a week most of the Basic concepts about JavaScript and DHTML. The big problem with this book is that it doesn't cover Netscape at all, in fact, not even the first example will work with Netscape. So if you buy this book and you want to use both browsers, consider about searching a little bit on the Web on how to make your pages CrossBrowser capable after coding them ... I consider this book an excellent start for people who has no knowledge at all about JavaScript and DHTML ...

Rating: 2
Summary: Good Broad base coverage, but that's it
Comment: I didn't figure out that this book only covered IE until about midway through. However, the cover of the book has a picture Netscape Navigator on it.

This book offers a huge vault of neat little tricks, but I wouldn't want to learn Javascript from it. The examples are right on par, though, for teaching you examples. If you have no other programming experience, you'll probably want to avoid this book, as I felt it was good only if you knew Javascript already and wanted to perform a neat trick or two with the stuff. Most of it involves graphical quirks rather than form processing and such.

There are better books around, but this one has its place. If the examples were cross browser compatible, I'd give this book a higher rating.