Author: Stoyan Stefanov
Publisher: O'Reilly/Yahoo Press, 2010
Pages: 240
ISBN: 978-0596806750
Aimed at: Existing Javascript programmers
Rating: 5
Pros:Enjoyable, informative and will improve your code
Cons: Requires the reader to understand some Javascript programming
Reviewed by: Mike James

This is a really enjoyable book - it's short, easy-to-read and you are likely to learn something from every page.

To put things simply what this book is about is the best way to use Javascript and, because Javascript is such a flexible language, it informs you about lots of bad ways to avoid as well.

The first two chapters deal with the basics in the sense that they are fundamental to all uses of Javascript - globals, for loops, for-in loops, switch, coding conventions and so on. Chapter 3 deals with literals and constructors. This isn't a from-the-ground-up treatment of Javascript objects but a look at some of the finer points tha you could well have overlooked. The same is true of chapter 4 on functions. It explains the standard uses of Javascript functions - callbacks, immediate functions, currying and so on. Chapter 5  discusses object creation patterns - namespaces, access,  constants, and chaining.

From here we move into less Javascript specific patterns. Chapter 6 deals with defaults, inheritance, mix-ins and so on. Chapter 7 deals with wider gang of four classical patterns - singleton, factory, iterator, decorator and so on. Chapter 8 deals with the DOM and Browser patterns.

The good thing about this book is that it doesn' t attempt to bully you into using a particular pattern or approach. It describes the pros and cons of a range of approaches and then concludes that one of them is likely to better - even if only very slightly better in many cases.

As long as you know enough Javascript and programming in general to appreciate the arguments than this is a very enjoyable book that can't help but improve the quality of the code you produce. I said at the start that it isn't suitable for the beginner but if you are a beginner then your goal in life should be to progress to the point that you can benefit from reading it.

This is now my official number one intermediate to advanced Javascript book - highly recommended.