JavaScript is an interpreted, object-based scripting language for building highly interactive Web pages. Teach Yourself JavaScript dramatically reduces the learning curve for Web-page programmers new to JavaScript. In plain English and with the help of numerous screen captures, the book covers the latest version of JavaScript, shows how it works with Microsoft and Netscape software, and walks you through all the steps for mastering this tool to produce coherent, maintainable code for interactive Web pages and to debug mistakes.

Decent but a little unfocused
As a warning, this book is directed at novices who have little programming experience and no prior exposure to JavaScript. If you have programming experience but no prior exposure to JavaScript, you will find it simplistic at times but will still likely benefit from reading it; however, if you have prior exposure to JavaScript, you probably won’t learn much from it.

Those looking for a quick intro to the language will appreciate this book, however, and will especially like the book’s clarity and concision. It tends to avoid to get bogged down with extraneous detail (the one exception being in the section on forms, where the author basically re-introduces most of the HTML form concepts; this is supposed to be a book on JavaScript, not HTML, and the back cover claims it assumes a knowledge of HTML, so I’m not exactly sure why that material was there).

As one more warning, this book will not introduce you to the more advanced or modern functionalities of JavaScript. With that said, it’ll still provide the tyro with a good introduction.