JavaScript Examples Bible - UserWorks Technologies

Preface
Acommon thread running throughout most of my computer-book–writing
career is that I tend to write a book I wish I had had in order to learn a new
technology in the first place. Because I must write that book without the benefit of
existing models, I begin by doing my best to master the technology, and then I write
the book to help other newcomers learn as much as I did, but more quickly and
with less pain, anguish, and confusion. To accomplish that goal, I write as much
content as I feel is necessary to cover the topic in the depth that my readers
require.
When I started on what became the 4th and Gold editions of the JavaScript Bible,
there were models to follow (my previous three editions) plus a substantial amount
of brand new material, much of which had not yet been documented anywhere. I
also assumed the responsibility of integrating the frequently conflicting and competing
philosophies of the ways the JavaScript language is applied to a variety of
browser brands and versions. Resolving these conflicts is a challenge that I face in
my own programming work with clients, and I take great pleasure in sharing my
solutions and approaches with other programmers floating in the same boat.
As my editor and I began counting the pages I had assembled for these new editions,
we discovered that the number of pages far outstripped the printer’s binding
capabilities, even in a thicker volume made possible by using a hard cover (the
Gold edition). Certainly not all of the words that I had written were so precious that
some of them couldn’t be cut. But we were hundreds of pages beyond capacity. To
cut that much content would have forced exclusion of coverage of language or document
object model vocabulary.
Fortunately, as had been done in previous editions, the plan for the new editions
included Adobe Acrobat versions of the books on the accompanying CD-ROM.
Although a significant compromise to ease of reading, it was possible to move some
of the book’s content to the CD-ROM and leave the most important parts on the
printed page. For the softcover 4th edition, reference chapters covering less-used or
advanced subjects were pulled from print; for the hardcover Gold edition, which
was longer and targeted more for professional scripters, the advanced chapters
were put back into the book (along with 15 additional chapters for that edition),
and the JavaScript tutorial was exiled to the CD-ROM.
But even after making the difficult decisions about which chapters could go to the
CD-ROMs, the page counts for both volumes were still excessive. Something else —
something big — had to go. The remaining bundle that could free us from the page