If you are new to web design or an old pro like me this book is a must have in my opinion. I love how it starts out with the basics like XHTML and CSS then moves on to the good stuff.

Each chapter is full of examples and sample code showing you how to do the most common techniques that you will face as a web developer/designer. I really liked the DOM scripting sections and how to manipulate the DOM on the fly. Learning object coding is so important and is key if you want to really be good at Javascript. It was cool to see the sections on JQuery and DOJO since I'm staring to use these libraries heavily on my sites.

I feel it's so important to understand not only how to build nice looking sites but to know how to code them for speed and browser compatibility. This book covers these essentials and even walks you through Firebug and how to use it to identify problem areas in your web applications. I have not seen a better book on the subject and I hope you learn just as much as I did from it. This one will be on my desk for a while!

I've read a ton of books on JavaScript, and Ray Harris' wonderful tome is perhaps THE best modern titles you'll find on the topic. The book is intelligently organized, and written in a concise fashion, with practical examples, delivered with a friendly voice that makes what can often be convoluted or confusing concepts easy to grasp for beginners.

On that note, the book serves as a valuable refresher for the experienced web developer wanting to get up to speed on current-day concepts or the advanced dev needing best practices in her coding. And like all Murach titles, the book doesn't inundate the reader with useless chapters of the history of the at-hand topic, it just tells you what JavaScript can do for your web applications and shows you the best, most efficient ways to do it.

In particular, I found Harris' work to have exceptional contributions of several topics: there is excellent coverage of debugging tools & techniques, featuring the latest browsers, plugins, and GUIs. The book has a wonderful discussion of how to use client-side regular expressions. And the chapters on object-oriented programming and DOM scripting are some of the best you'll find. Likewise appreciated are the discussions on JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and Dojo.

It's truly a holistic look at client-side development.

So Get out and buy this book...whatever your level, it'll be a welcome addition to your technical library!