Learn JavaScript Visually
People cannot be blamed for thinking JavaScript is hard when trying it out for the first time. Learning to
program is like learning a new language. A number of rules and grammar syntax guidelines exist to follow. It
also requires memorizing a bevy of glossary terms for each language, and unless a person works with JavaScript
at least 8 hours a day, the person is unlikely to become very familiar with programming quickly; at least,
that has been the situation for years until now.
This book is for Visual Learners. Visual Learners retain information very differently than their left brained
counter-parts, and thus benefit from different approaches. Full color illustrations help memory triggers as your
brain never forgets an image, metaphor or schema. One page of this visual JavaScript guide can equal one chapter
of a conventional book as illustrations can make a world of difference over strictly words on a page!
Reader Christian Wilkie says, "Let me preface this by the fact that I'm a software developer,
but I mainly code in Java and am only a beginner at JavaScript (by the way – they are completely different).
Some of the positives of the book:
• There are a lot of pictures in the book that help the reader with understanding each section.
• There's a section about closures, one of the more confusing parts of JavaScript that trips a lot of people up.
• The author goes into detail not only about the JavaScript syntax, but also some background about where JavaScript
is used, how to use JavaScript in your browser, etc. This seems like it would be helpful for beginners.
• Each section has an exercise at the end, with a solution provided by the author (linked to his personal page).
A couple negatives I found:
• Some of the punctuation in the book is a bit sloppy. For instance on pages 20-21 some random sentences don't
start with capital letters. Also on 21 for some reason a single image caption has a period while none of the
others do. There are many other examples of this throughout the book, so hopefully the author will fix some
of this in the ebook.
• A bit light on content. The book is slightly over 100 pages so don't expect it to be extremely comprehensive.
In general there are 2-3 pages for each key JavaScript concept⁄syntax.
Overall it seems like a pretty decent book for a complete beginner (which seems to be the intended demographic
for this book). For that audience, I think it could definitely be a decent resource to learn the basics of JavaScript.
After reading this book, or for the more advanced JavaScript programmer, I would recommend next looking at
JavaScript: The Good Parts
by Douglas Crockford, which may be more difficult for beginners to read.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for my unbiased review."
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