Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code. Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables. When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language.

If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

Chapter 1. Good Parts 

Chapter 2. Grammar 

Chapter 3. Objects 

Chapter 4. Functions 

Chapter 5. Inheritance 

Chapter 6. Arrays 

Chapter 7. Regular Expressions 

Chapter 8. Methods 

Chapter 9. Style 

Chapter 10. Beautiful Features