Javascript Step-By-Step is an introductory Javascript book. It covers the very basics from Javascript syntax and usage to more advanced topics such as AJAX and JQuery. Unfortunately by covering so much it delivers little of use. One of the key refrains is “however, learning how to do that is beyond the scope of this book”.
- Suggesting the use of Visual Studio or Eclipse is overkill and may put off beginning programmers. And the instructions for setting them up were wrong.
- Regular expressions are introduced before almost anything else. Regular expressions are hard to do right even with experience. They are seldom the best solution and introducing them so early was a mistake
- 2011-02-25: Since my review, O’Reilly has released a new version of the PDF with much improved images. Comparison below. The new PDF weighs in at 9.86mb while the older one is 5.67mb. The increased size is worth it.
The image compression in the free PDF version I received from O’Reilly in order to do this review was so high that the screenshots were frequently unreadable. I can only hope the print version is of higher quality. (This is exactly what it looks like in the PDF).- Old
- New
- Old
The not so lousy:
- I appreciated the way concepts were often shown in the way you might solve it as a naive programmer. Then the code was evolved to show better, less obvious ways to accomplish the same thing.
- The coverage of JQuery and JQueryUI were very helpful and appreciated. It felt like the whole book was just leading up to these two chapters. It was the first time you could feel the author’s enthusiasm for the subject.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend this book. It just isn’t a great guide to the specifics of the language or the techniques of using it. I’d be hard pressed to build a working application with the information contained here. Perhaps it is just my personality, but I much prefer a book where an actual project is built. This was just bits and pieces chapter after chapter with no common thread tying them together.
Full disclosure: If it wasn’t obvious I received a free PDF version of this book for free in exchange for writing this review. I’ve followed the review guidelines set by O’Reilly. Especially (and always) “First and foremost, we want nothing but complete honesty in your reviews”.
One of my favorite parts about being back in the Northwest, aside from being close to family, the mountains, the green, and pretty much everything, is the beach. In Austin we were a good 3 hours away from a real beach. Here I’d say we are less than 10 minutes. Today we went to the beach not because the weather was so great, but simply because it wasn’t raining. The wind made it rather cold, especially hands and fingers, but the kids had fun anyway. They don’t seem to notice the cold at all until they get bored playing.
Playing with sticks.
Flying the kite. It almost got away, but we caught it.
Launching the kite.
It was chilly.
Jillian made sand castles.
Wesley helped.
Getting water for her project.
"Just one more detail."
Making ravioli by hand is hard. Making them with your kids is not any easier, but a lot more fun. This weekend the kids and I made homemade ravioli. We don’t have a pasta maker so we did it all the old fashioned way. The kids helped, did much of the work actually, every step of the way.
Wesley grated the Parmesan cheese for the filling.
After the filling was made we started on the dough for the ravioli. Nothing but flour and egg yolks. Wesley was really excited to make his flour “volcano” and then fill it with eggs.
Jillian and Wesley mixed the dough with their fingers. Needless to say, they had fun.
Wesley doing his best to knead the very stiff dough. I had to take over after a bit to get it the right texture.
The egg yolks gave the finished dough a nice yellow color.
After resting the dough we divided it and rolled out as thin as possible. We got it as thin as possible, but it was still a bit thicker than I would have liked.
The kids put a teaspoon of filling on the dough every few inches and then painted water along the edges to help them stick together.
Jillian really like pushing in the dough together to separate the individual ravioli.
The pastry cutter gave us nice edges.
We probably should have gotten 36 ravioli, but came away with about 2 dozen. Too big, too thick, or both…you decide.
To go with the pasta I baked some Pugliese and made a quick homemade sauce. Amber made a side salad and we had a great homemade Italian dinner. The kids ate basically none of it (except the bread, they love homemade bread), but I think it was one of the best meals we’ve had in a while. A ton of work, but fun and really fulfilling.
Look what Wesley learned to do today! If you haven’t told him lately you should tell him you love him before he manages to kill himself. Between this and the flips, spins, cartwheels and other “maneuvers” it probably won’t be long now.
Tags: Wesley