What This Book Covers

Chapter 1 talks briefly about the history, present, and future of JavaScript, and then moves on to explore the basics of object-oriented programming (OOP) in general. You then learn how to set up your training environment (Firebug) in order to dive into the language on your own, using the book examples as a base.

Chapter 2 discuses the language basics: variables, data types, arrays, loops, and conditionals.

Chapter 3 covers functions. JavaScript has many uses for functions and here you learn to master them all. You also learn about the scope of variables and JavaScript's built-in functions. An interesting, but often misunderstood feature of the language—closures—is demystified at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 4 introduces objects: how to work with properties and methods, and the various ways to create your objects. There's also an overview of the built-in objects in JavaScript, such as Math and Date (just an overview, Appendix C has all the details).

Chapter 5 is dedicated to the all-important concept of prototypes in JavaScript.

Chapter 6 expands your "thinking in JavaScript" horizon, discussing a dozen ways to implement inheritance in JavaScript.

Chapter 7 is the browser chapter. In this chapter, you learn about BOM (Browser Object Model), DOM (W3C's Document Object Model), browser events, and AJAX.

Chapter 8 dives into various unique JavaScript coding patterns, as well as several language-independent design patterns, translated to JavaScript from the Book of Four, the most influential work of software design patterns.

Appendix A lists the reserved words in JavaScript.

Appendix B is a reference to the built-in JavaScript functions, together with sample uses.

Appendix C is a reference that provides detail and provides examples of the use of every method and property of every built-in object in JavaScript.

Appendix D is a regular expressions pattern reference.