Writing Cross-Browser Dynamic HTML :

Rating:
Summary: An enormous disappointment
Review: After reading the first 100 pages of the book, I visited the Web site. Just about everything I tried on the site failed: The "openSesame()" function that was supposed to open another document gave me a "not found" error. Inspecting the code allowed me to open the intended page..., but text appears on top of images.

If this was intentional, the author knows nothing about design; if it was an accident, then I question the author's knoweldge of dynamic HTML. Neither of these possibilities caused me to be confident that the book would be able to help me understand and use dynamic HTML.

Even worse, JavaScript error after JavaScript error popped up. There's a "references" page, but every single link died with an "object expected" error on line 1, character 1. The most common cause of this problem is a misspelled function name or function all (something as simple as naming the function foobar() and then calling FooBar().

I gave up on the site.

I gave up on the book.

Too bad. I really had high hopes for both.

Rating:
Summary: A good book for Beginners and Novices
Review: I have used this book as a learning tool in training classes and have found it gives a sound foundation on DHTML and how it is implemented in Netscape and IE's current supported versions. Ms Williamson has layed out the basic principals that are being used today and lays the foundation that can be built upon by Developers and Designers in the future. Although some of the examples did not work as they were intended we were able to make sense of what the intention was and see how the usage would enable us to provide pages for clients that could be impactive and easily viewed.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing New, Nothing In Depth, Nothing Worthwhile
Review: I thought this was going to be a good book for creating business class Cross-Browser DHTML Web Applications. IT'S NOT.

Apparently, the target audience for this book was the weekend web-hobbiests who want cute interactive graphics for thier homepages.

This book is not worth the paper it is written on.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: If you are looking for the source to solving all your issues that just don't seem to work for both IE and Netscape, this is NOT the book. Nuff said.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: If you are looking for the source to solving all your issues that just don't seem to work for both IE and Netscape, this is NOT the book. Nuff said.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and obsolete - Update needed
Review: In the year 2001, what would you expect from a NEW book about "cross-browser Dynamic HTML" ? I would expect a book showing me how to develop code that will work in Internet Explorer 4.x and up, Netscape Communicator 4.x, Gecko-based browsers like Netscape 6 and Mozilla, plus preferable a general implementation of (or at least a discussion about) "future-safe" DHTML based solely on the recommended W3C and ECMA standards. It is "alternative" browsers like Opera and Konqueror I hope to see support of through the pure standards based implementation (and it will proplably work with the Gecko-based browsers and the upcomming IE6 browser too).

Does Heather Williamsen book live up to my expections ? I'm afraid very far from... Heathers ambigition have been to support IE4-5, NS4.x and NS6. I guess this is allright as a MINIMUM, since it covers the browsers most people will use for some time. But at the time of writing the final version of Netscape 6 has clearly not been released yet, and wheather Heather hasn't done her homework good enough or if the specifikations of Netscape 6/Mozilla has changed during its development, I don't know, but it is a fact that none (or very little) of the DHTML-code pressented in the book will work in Netscape 6, Mozilla or other browsers based on the Gecko layout engine. The worst mistake is that Heather takes support of Netscape 4.x Layers for granted in Netscape 6. Layers is not part of the W3C standard, and this propritary Netscape 4.x feature is NOT supported in Netscape 6 or other Gecko-based browsers !

Off course you can learn something about generating DHTML that works in IE4-5.x and NS4.x in this book, but without (working) support of Netscape 6 I can never recommend this book to anyone taking webdevelopment seriously. I hope there will be some comprehensive corrections/updates to find on the Apress website soon, becourse if not this book has been a completely waste of money for me. Sorry about these hard words.

The day there is a good cross-browser DHTML book that lives up to my expectations mentioned first in this little review, please let me know ! (Why hasn't anybody written a review of "New Perspectives on Creating Web Pages with Dynamic HTML" [ISBN 0619019182] telling about its browser/standard support yet ? - No I'm not gonna buy it if I don't see somebody else reviewing it in a positive way. I aint gonna burn my fingers twice).

Rating:
Summary: Ouch!
Review: The reviews below are entirely accurate about the (lack of useful) content in this book. But I have to add that I've never seen a book as poorly edited as this one. (There are a lot of poorly edited books out there, too.) Variables change their name from one line of code to the next; typos abound; and on p. 184 a query by the editor to the author has been duly set into the code! So the code is unreadable, and even after you correct for the typos and errors and omissions it still doesn't work, and even if it did work it would be lame.

I paid ... for this, too.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great.
Review: This book is a good book. It contains all the necessary references you will need to do beginner to intermediate level DHTML development. However, it lacks anything beyond fairly superficial coverage. For the novice to intermediate developer, this book is probably for you. If you are an advanced developer you won't learn anything new (I was hoping for some nitty-gritty detailed stuff). I would have really liked to see a reference list that not only listed major version support/compatibility for DOM/CSS/JavaScript/Etc. but for all the minor version support. If I could pick 3.5 stars that's where this book would be.

Finally, I have to point out that some of her example web pages don't even work in IE5.5...which really turned me off, big time.