Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, 3rd edition
Danny Goodman
O'Reilly Media, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52740-2
US$ 59.99
Rating: 4/5 (very good)
This O'Reilly book wants to be the definitive all-in-one guide for web developers, that is to say the one single book you need to keep on you desk when creating web sites. It covers everything from XHTML to CCS to DOM to JavaScript, and is very up-to-date (a lot of Ajax and other Web 2.0 stuff is included).
Does the guide achieve its goals? I think so, and I think it does that quite well. The reference is comprehensive, especially the DOM one which spawns across more than 500 pages (on a total of nearly 1300!). For every tag, DOM element, or JavaScript function you find in the reference, various details are provided: a browser compatibility list, a brief description, a (often minimal but focused) example, and the detail of parameters/attributes/return values/whatever applicable.
Each chapter of the guide comes with an introduction which explains the concepts for which you'll find the reference. This introductory parts are, however, the less useful of the whole book: they're just a few pages long, and not enough to learn concepts properly, so you either need to know those concepts beforehand, or you'll want to grab another - more explanatory - book.
All in all this book provides a valid reference and help for the web developer, as it allows to quickly retrieve the piece of information you don't know, or you can't remember. It's big, comprehensive, useful.
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