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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
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Title:
JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook
Author:
Danny Goodman
ISBN:
0-596-00467-2
Publisher:
O'Reilly
Pages:
520pp
Price:
£28-50
Reviewer:
Alyn Scott
Subject:
javascript
Appeared in:
16-2
This is another of O'Reilly's Cookbook series covering JavaScript and Dynamic HTML. It provides code fragments and complete examples for web site designers to incorporate into their own web pages.

The presentation is quite clear with a discussion and detailed description of each 'recipe'. It can be somewhat dry reading unless you are able to try out the examples. A few more pictures would also have been helpful. All the sample code is available for free download on O'Reilly's web site.

There are 15 chapters in 522 pages that cover a broad range of subject areas. It starts with simple concepts like variables, arrays, functions, etc and then goes into more detailed examples. Some complete libraries of useful functions are provided, such as cross-browser positioning of HTML elements, creating custom scrollbars, etc. There is quite a large section on creating custom menus in various styles.

XML is all the rage these days and this book includes sections on importing XML data. The examples use XML-formatted data for custom menus and converting into JavaScript objects for loading into tables.

The discussions recommend good site design practices, such as not opening sub-windows and supporting all the common web browsers. Mac users are not excluded either.

I thought that this book would be very useful for anyone creating their own dynamic web sites. I did not have time to try out many of the examples, but the source code looks to be well written. It is well commented and described, so it should not be too hard to customise for your own personal requirements.