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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition
by David Flanagan

Publisher: O'Reilly Buy it Now! 

ISBN: 0596000480
Format: Paperback, 936pp
CD: NO

Being one of the best resources about JavaScript and overall client-side web programming, O'Reilly's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has lived to see its 4th edition, updated according to the newest web browsers and standards. I started writing this review with a considerable amount of respect and regardless of what you think of it or some other review about this book, the small quote written by Brendan Eich (the creator of JavaScript) at the back cover tells more than enough about its quality:

"A must-have reference for expert JavaScript programmers...
Well-organized and detailed."

There are two distinctive parts of the book. The first one is a "theoretical" part, where the author thoroughly explains JavaScript and client-side web programming topics in a standard fashion with all the syntax, problems and accompanying examples. The second half of a book is reserved for MSDN-like "reference" part where the complete list of classes, properties and methods is given separately for the core JavaScript, web browsers implemented JavaScript (or client-side JavaScript) and W3C DOM (W3C recommended model for representing a HTML or XML document). It's important to emphasize that the author holds on to this W3C standard for web browsers DOM implementation throughout the whole book as well as the ECMA-262 standard for the core JavaScript language. Having said that, one might think that the book is written from the theoretical point of view, but on the contrary, its content is strongly focused towards the two most popular and most commercial web browsers - Microsoft IE and Netscape, of course. The best thing is that, because of the different Microsoft and Netscape implementations of JavaScript and DOM standards, all the browser specifics are clearly pointed out to the tiniest bit (and with respect to the browser version, including the (for the moment) newest MS IE 6.0 and Netscape 6.0), which is very important, especially to those developers who want to make their client-side functionality to work in both browsers. I particularly like the brief history of Microsoft and Netscape standards implementation, the author made quite an effort in clarifying the inconsistencies between the two browsers and their different versions as well as some common misconceptions about JavaScript.

I could go on and on writing nothing but the best about this book. I think it covers all relevant topics and find it now indispensable in my client-side web programming tasks. Expert developers will find its reference part very useful for quickly finding what they need, but I also consider it quite approachable to the beginners (well, with at least some programming experience in another programming language, preferably C or Java). Superb stuff, eagerly waiting for the 5th edition.