Goodman covers the JavaScript 1.2 language comprehensively, and focuses on developing documents that fully exploit the capabilities of Netscape Navigator 4.0x. The author begins with the fundamentals of the language--variables, loops, data structures, functions, and the like. Then, he proceeds to systematically explore the more difficult characteristics of the language, including its limited object-orientation features and the extensions that apply to Dynamic HTML (DHTML). Server-side coverage is sparse, but that technology isn't nearly as widely used as client-side JavaScript.
JavaScript Bible contains both a tutorial and a reference, so it's useful to advanced JavaScript programmers as well as to beginners. Plus, the illustrative examples included in these pages--and on the accompanying CD-ROM--are generally useful. You'll find image-rollover routines, client-side database lookups, a DHTML puzzle, and many more programs that you'll be able to quickly adapt to your own projects. JavaScript Bible is a winner. --David Wall