To address the latest and greatest advances in Web development, author Dave Thau is out with The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition: A Practical Guide to Interactive Web Pages. This new edition of the popular JavaScript guide has been completely updated with coverage of Ajax and features new examples throughout to reflect today’s Web environment.

“Dave Thau has been demonstrating his JavaScript wisdom since before it was cool. Now, this new edition of his classic text makes JavaScript wizardry more accessible than ever for experts and beginners alike,” said Jesse James Garrett, a.k.a., the guy who coined the term Ajax. Indeed, Thau’s JavaScript tutorials on the WebMonkey.com Web site have been considered THE resource for aspiring Web developers.

With JavaScript, Webmasters can add interactivity, animation, and other tricks to their Web pages quickly, and many have turned to Thau for his guidance and expertise since the first Book of JavaScript was released in 2000. Like that original edition, this updated version isn’t just a collection of scripts to cut and paste into HTML, only to find out later that nothing works as expected. Using real-world examples as the starting point, author Thau walks readers step-by-step through various scripts and explains how they produce the desired effects. A companion Web site contains code and images for every example in the book, answers to the assignments, script libraries for hard-to-program applications, and many useful software programs.

“The new version of The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition offers the same elegant simplicity, but now includes the whiz-bang popular advances like working with the DOM and Ajax,” said Ted Rheingold, Top Dog at Dogster, Inc. (makers of Dogster.com & Catster.com)

Inside, readers learn to:

• Work with frames, forms, cookies, and alarms
• Use events to react to a user’s actions
• Perform image swaps and rollovers
• Program functions to produce customized solutions
• Store user preferences with cookies and build a shopping cart
• Use Ajax to turn Web pages into desktop applications

The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition will help anyone looking to spruce up tired-looking pages and take their site from bland to brilliant.