Javascript: The Definitive Guide

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1.8 Using the Rest of This Book

The rest of this book is in four parts. Part I, immediately following this chapter, documents the standalone JavaScript language. This is the core language common to both client-side and server-side implementations of JavaScript. Chapters 2 through 5 begin this section with some bland but necessary reading--these chapters cover the topics necessary when learning any new programming language.

The next four chapters of this first section become more interesting. They still cover the core of the JavaScript language, but document parts of the language that will not already be familiar to you, even if you already know C or Java. These chapters must be studied carefully if you want to really understand JavaScript:

Part II of the book documents client-side JavaScript. The chapters in this part document the web browser objects that are at the heart of client-side JavaScript, and provide detailed examples of their use. Any interesting JavaScript program running in a web browser will rely heavily on features specific to the client-side. You should read chapters 10, 11, and 12 first. After that, you can read chapters 13 through 20 in any order you choose, although you'll probably get the most out of this part if you read them in the order they are presented.

Part III is the reference section that makes up the second half of this book. It contains complete documentation for all JavaScript objects, methods, properties, functions, and event handlers, both for core and client-side JavaScript.

Finally, Part IV is a section of appendices that you may find useful. They include lists of commonly encountered bugs, a list of differences between JavaScript in Navigator and Internet Explorer, and other helpful information.


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