New to javascript

[sseuratan]

i am new to javascript. i am having a little problem with understsnding the language. can anyone suggest any books or sites that can give me some assistance in understanding javascript?
any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

[freefall]

Hello,

I would try W3Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp) for just beginning. I found everything I needed there to get my feet wet into Javascript, but I also had a base in C++ so 85% was the same. But that would be a good place to start.

My current haven of resource is the MSDN Library (I access it through http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects.asp It's incredibly helpful once you've got an idea about the language and how it works to find out the extents of what you can do, I use it all the time!

Hope I've been of some assistance, good luck and God bless!
- Ian

www.degreethree.com/newsite (in progress)

[Charles]

If you are going to worship at the altar of Microsoft just be careful to note that Jscript is not JavaScript. And know also that you really cannot learn JavaScript by playing around with it or through tutorials. Any language has a set of tools available and unless you are familiar with all of them you'll end up using the hammer on a screw. More than once on these boards I've seen somebody offer a solution that took more than 50 lines of code that I got down to three or fewer because I knew better the language.

Read, several times and cover to cover, JavaScript : The Definitive Guide (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XYOS1KITP&isbn=0596000480&itm=1) by David Flanagan. And keep it on your desk after that.

The whole JavaScript and the web thing was Netscape's fault so I like to use their documentation. The one for JavaScript 1.3, though technically out of date, seems to me to be the best. See http://devedge.netscape.com/central/javascript/.

But JavaScript as it is on the web is really two things. At its core it's a real object oriented language but then they added on a Document Object Model (DOM). Netscape and Microsoft started out using slightly different DOMs and the W3C has given us a third DOM that we're now supposed to be using. The core is called ECMA Script and can be found at http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/Standards/Ecma-262.HTM. The W3C DOM can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-DOM-Level-1-19981001/.