Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Product Details

Goodman assumes a solid foundation, if not expertise, in basic HTML and an understanding of what DHTML is all about. From those assumptions, he presents a meaty, information-dense volume. The first of the book's four sections discusses industry standards and how to apply the basic principles of DHTML. He emphasizes the differences in Web browsers and discusses how to build pages so that they work well in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The second section is an extensive, quick reference of all the tags, objects, and properties of HTML, cascading style sheets, Document Object Model, and core JavaScript. A particularly handy cross-reference guide to this information follows, helping you locate it in alternate ways. The final section contains appendices, with useful tables of values and commands. --Elizabeth Lewis

Product Reviews

(2 stars) - Disgrace compared to the 2nd edition
First, I'll say that I've owned the previous two editions. The 2nd was 1400 pages. This "new" and expanded version (covering buzzwords AJAX and Web 2.0 along with Mozilla, Safari, and Opera) is somehow only 1300 pages. How could this be? Well, the last edition had 4 parts. This one only has 3. They cut the first 7 chapters out. I would be OK with this as the remaining is ONLY a reference, but it's not. The reason is that it's not is that the index is pure rubbish (and I'm using a lot of restraint to avoid profanity). It went from 56 pages down to barely 16. It's like they were on a mission to save pages! Another example of cost-cutting at your expense is there are no listings for something simple such as "onmouseover". It's under "mouseover" because that's the DOM event name.

As a result of the index, it is impossible to look up anything. I'll give you an example. In the 2nd edition, the word "position/positioning" had nearly 1/2 page of entries/sub-entries/etc. in the index. The new has only ONE line. The page that it takes you to is also fairly useless and says "See Chapter 5 for details and examples". That's it, noting more specific, just: Chapter 5. I looked through the roughly 125 pages in Chapter 5 by hand and couldn't find anything relevant. This book is a lesson in frustration for when you know a tag or attribute and are trying to just look up the defaults or possible values or how you access a DOM object or CSS property through JavaScript. The only usable way I found is to use BOTH books and look it up in the 2nd edition first to find out "about" where it might be in the 3rd edition. What a waste of time!

Further, the book is filled with probably 1/3 of "theoretical" DOM and CSS that is defined/proposed standards but is not implemented by any browser, so it is useless to any developer who develops in the real world. Combined with the fact that it still covers Netscape Navigator 4.x (give me a break) and all its proprietary/funky HTML, then 1/2 the book is useless reference. Also, much of the reference is terse 1 or 2 sentences. Without an index, it seriously needs "see also" type listings like you would find in a man page, etc.

In sum, this is a frustrating book with information for a given attribute/etc. scattered around in 8 major sections including "shared" sections. I found it takes at least 5X to 10X your time to look up something than it should based on the 2nd edition. I do give it two stars because you know the information is in there somewhere. It just takes forever to find it.

(4 stars) - An invaluable resource for hardcore developers
If you're a hardcore developer who shuns frameworks and frontends, this book is your bible for three reasons: cross-browser compatibility notices, completeness, and historical insight.

This book is a great touchstone for developer and freelance interviews. If the person rating to technical competence doesn't know about this book, chances are you know more about good development than your interviewer does.

The only real flaw with this book is its reduced index. The 1st and 2nd editions of this book all had thorough indexes that let you look up prototypes, elements and properties even by casual name. This 3rd edition index is stripped of those conveniences forcing you to work your brain harder to remember the proper context of that little known element you're trying to look up. Good brain exercise, perhaps. But, very annoying during crunch time. I encourage Mr. Goodman to beef the index back up for the 4th edition, which better be coming soon. (with Chrome support, yes?)

(3 stars) - Frustrating
A generally good reference book, but lacks a thorough index, and the page headings lack detail. Plan on spending lots of time flipping through the "input" and "document" pages looking for the page you want.

The book notes browser compatibility for each item, but its hard to not feel drowned in the clutter of useless "IE n/a NN n/a Moz n/a Saf n/a Op 9 DOM n/a" entries.

What I really wish I had was a "DHTML Best Practices" book where the primary useful, portable, and recommended tags/classes/events/whatever were highlighted and the deprecated/incompatible stuff was just summarized in a secondary section.

(3 stars) - Book Index sucks
I used to have the previous edition. I could quickly find objects and properties in the books index and just go to what I wanted. This new edition doesn't even have the event handling properties such as onmouseover and such. Its also missing some minor properties for css or html. I know the big ones, its the minor ones that i need help on. Its great that it takes into account safari, mozilla and opera compatibility, but they really did a crappy job on the index. Apparently they wanted to safe paper and removed some things from it. so, now I use the old edition and new edition. A big inconvenience.

(5 stars) - Awesome
The ONLY DHTML reference you need. This book has everything covered from Javascript, HTML, CSS, DOM, Ajax, Web 2.0. This is the only book that I always have by my side while developing.

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