Rating:  - Once good, now outdated
This was an excellent book two years ago, (and still is), but it's now outdated. I bought it based on its nearly five-star rating; I wish I'd done my homework, since I immediately needed to buy other books to supplement this one.
Rating:  - breadth but no Depth
Book has lots of examples. Many involve using libraries such as Prototype and JQuery. But, if you are not already familiar with using those libraries, the examples will not make much sense. And considering the typos in the straight JavaScript examples, it left me wondering about the validity of the library demos. Written in the style of a blogger where the author expects you to follow a link to a library's web page and then come back before you can understand the example. If I'm paying for a book to cuddle up with to read on a winter's night, I want it to be self contained - and not expect me to reach for the laptop to read up on the syntax of another library. It also didn't even touch upon one of the more difficult to grasp "Pro" techniques - scoping of "this" when using object methods during AJAX callbacks in the author's own code examples or the various libraries he touts.
Rating:  - If you want to know the next step
If you are an intermediate javascript developer, and you want to know what to learn next in the javascript language this book is for you. Inside you will find concise information about several obscure javascript elements which will make your coding more effective once you master them.
Rating:  - Ready for Level 2?
After writing disorganized (yet effective) JavaScript functions for seven years, I really wanted to get more out of the language. I wanted to code more efficiently. As each new project started, I found myself scurrying to find old functions strewn across different computers or servers. Even when I found this code, I would often need to make some significant changes to it.
So, I did what any self-taught front-end developer would do: I hit the online tutorials. Online tutorials didn't really do it for me, though. The good tutorials seemed too short, and I kept reverting back to sloppy coding after a few days.
Then I came across this book.
The examples are excellent in demonstrating how the language can really work for you if you're willing to put the time into it. That being said, this book is not for beginners. This book is probably best for three groups of people:
1) Intermediate JavaScript developers who are ready to finally adopt code reuse and reap the nice things a loosely typed, object-based language can give you.
2) Java/C++ programmers who need to pick up JavaScript for a project. These people are already familiar with OO concepts and will probably have an easier time learning the language from a book like this.
3) Ambitious beginners with a lot of patience.
After only 3 chapters, I started to think about JavaScript in a different way. For the first time ever, I found myself reusing code with little to no change required. My code was easier to read, too.
I'm a big proponent of activities that give back the time you invest. Bad books don't do this. Good ones, like this book, do.
Rating: - Pro Javascript - the title says it all
How refreshing to finally get a book written by a pro for pros, one that does not spend the first half trying to teach one how to program. Instead, it is assumed you know your stuff, know languages in general, but need a deep reference for what makes Javascript different, and where its power lies. Even the introduction taught me stuff I needed to know, about Javascript, and not about how to write a program.
If you are an experienced pro, but in classical languages (C/C++/C# etc), but are moving into AJAX, this is the book to get. And use Firebug in Firefox to follow along. The debug environment that provides is an eye-opener in itself.
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