Rating:  - Rather poor; definitely not as good as other O'Reilly titles
Most O'Reilly books I've read are fun and very informative, but this one is dry and full of typos, uses poor examples and is poorly ordered. I do not recommend this one.
Rating: - Ughhh!!!!
One does not read this book; one is tortured by it.
There are two major complaints I have with this book. The first is the number of errors in the text. (If you read another review of this book and it does not cite the problem with errors very early in the review, then you must be reading a review from Ms. Powers's fiance, sister-in-law, best friend, or cousin.) I have never seen anything close to this level of ineptitude in any other book I have ever read, programming-related or not. Just to tip-toe through this cow pasture:
- By my quick count, there are eighty-three errors listed on the book's errata web page. (It took me about two hours simply to go through the book and write in all of the corrections from the errata page.)
- Ms. Powers occasionally manages more than one error per page.
- Not only do the errors occur often, the arise early. There are errors in each of the book's first three Examples, with Example 1-3 alone mangaging to contain two errors.
- Beginning with Chapter 2, Ms. Powers concludes each chapter with a number of exercise questions - the answers to which are provided at the end of the book. Of the five Chapter 2 answers (i.e., the first five questions and answers in the book) there are errors in three.
- Page 11 is missing, well, two pages! The errata file contains ten paragraphs of text that is missing!
- Any number of errors are "simple" typos: the text uses a hyphen when there should be an underscore, variable names are misspelled, errant characters are enclosed, words are duplicated - that kind of thing. While this is sloppy and wholly unprofessional, one could argue that in The Grand Scheme of Things such errors are minor. However, a number of errors are more egregious. For example [all CAPS are mine]....
-On page 94 the book talks about how "the shift RETURNS the first element." Oops! The text should talk about how "the shift REMOVES the first element."
-On page 101 a sentence which begins "If a condition IS met...". Darn. It should read "If a condition ISN'T met..." (Details, details...)
-On page 127 a phrase "cascade means that the LOWEST..." should be (Anyone? Anyone? Class?...) "cascade means the HIGHEST..."
All in all, this is just shameful stuff. If you have a quasi-morbid sense of curiosity you might want to check out the Acknowledgments section which concludes Ms. Powers's Preface. There she thanks her editor, three "tech and content reviewers", a production editor, and a copy editor. I say "quasi-morbid sense of curiosity" because, presumably, all six individuals have since been, as the British like to say, "sacked."
All that said, let us gingerly put aside, for a moment, the stupefying number of errors in this book. How does it fare otherwise? (Or, to cite a quip I just love, "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?")
Well, I come now to my second major complaint. Errors and typos aside, the book is just terribly written. The organization is dreadful and her grammar is rotten. In fact, the only thing I see Ms. Powers having done well is to compiled the epitome of how NOT to write a book on programming. The two essentials of a good book on programming are that the author:
1) Organizes the material in a logical, coherent manner. A GOOD author introduces essential concepts at the very beginning, and then steadily builds upon and expands upon what the reader has just learned.
2) Takes absolutely every pain to minimize 'jumping ahead' on topics.
Ms. Powers, however, repeatedly drags the reader into complex asides before bailing out by saying "but we will cover that topic later." She does this from the get-go, and it is maddening. Here are some examples from Chapter 1 ALONE...
- In a section about cross-browser incompatibility (p.4), Ms. Powers states most of these incompatibilities "are based on differences in the underlying Document Object Model (DOM) exposed by the browser...". She then goes on for a couple of sentences about why this is so. I, for one, knew next to nothing about the Document Object Model, and I bought the book, in part, because I saw that it contained a discussion of the DOM. Ms. Powers's in-depth discussion of the Document Object Model, however, occurs in Chapters 9 and 10! She should either have made these chapters, perhaps, numbers 1 and 2, or she should should avoid mentioning the DOM until the subject is covered.
- In the section, beginning on p. 7, in which she introduces use of the
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