I haven’t been posting as actively lately because all of my time is being spent on my new book, Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design. The progress is going more slowly than I would like, but it’s going, which is something. For those of you interested in the book, here’s a quick status update…
The book has three parts (you can see [intlink id=”2412″ type=”post”]a rough TOC here[/intlink]), with Part 1 laying out the core information, Part 2 teaching the language in itself, and Part 3 introducing more advanced and newer uses of the language (frameworks, HTML5, server-side JS, advanced OOP stuff, etc.). The first draft of Part 1 is done. Chapter 1 explains what JS is and provides some context for using it in today’s environment. Chapter 2 includes a preview of what you’ll learn, and introduces some of the key concepts for using JS in an HTML page (the script tag, handling a simple event, etc.). Chapter 3 introduces the key software you’ll use: text editors and IDEs, browsers, and debugging tools.
Yesterday I submitted Chapter 4, which is the first chapter in Part 2. In it, I talk about how to create variables and assign values to them, and then explain the “simple” types: numbers, strings, and Booleans. The chapter ends with a discussion on type conversion, primarily from strings to numbers, as that can be a common cause of bugs. Tomorrow I’ll start on Chapter 5, which is control structures: conditionals and loops.
Right now the book is slated to be published in January 2012 (yes, yes, sorry for the delay). It should be available to read online as I write it through Safari’s Rough Cuts system. I’ll post those details once I have them.
Thanks again to everyone interested in the book!
