I got my new Javascript book delivered yesterday. My first thought was that it was quite thin (it only has about 150 pages including the appendices and index)! I took a look at the first section, and it’s quite thorough; the author himself states that it is quite information-dense, and that it will require a few readings to get it all.
I can’t say that I really like the railroad diagrams for describing the syntax of the language as much as I’d like more example code. I suppose the diagrams are more inclusive, they just seem a little excessive for what information they provide.
Yes, this is an incredibly terse book. Some rather hefty topics are given a few lines of discussion. Not that this is terrible, but it makes for a slow read. He establishes a few helper functions & methods to allow you to do certain tasks a lot easier, such as easier object creation and inheritance. These functions are referred to later on in the book as if they were parts of the core language, so you really need to know both the book and the core language very well.
I can see how the techniques in this book would help a developer build quite complex applications in JavaScript. Many would reject that idea as foolish but considering what companies like Google have been able to provide using this language show that with some ingenuity and a whole lot of determination, you can create some remarkable things.