Start Programming Using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (Chapman & Hall/CRC Textbooks in Computing) 1st Edition

There are lots of textbooks and guides available on the market that teach you how to program HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and a beginner can have a rough time choosing the right one. I've gone through many, but only few were actually beginner friendly. Well, this one is different. At first it seems a little unusual to read a programming book in a form of a dialog, but the author's style of writing soon captivates you and almost makes you feel like joining the professor and the two students. Each chapter of the book is organized like a live lecture with theory, examples, in-depth discussions of basic issues, and both, "stupid" and smart students' questions. One of my students said that he liked this approach because the questions asked by the students were many times similar to the questions that he would have asked too. Getting the answers right away was very convenient for him.The book's coverage extends from an absolutely-never-programmed-before level to more advanced problem solving principles and approaches like basic object-oriented programming techniques. At the end, the author even ventures using backtracking to program a Sudoku puzzle solver. There are many other exciting examples that motivate students to further explore and develop them on their own (e.g. countdown to an event, Thanksgiving and Easter Day calculator, lucky lotto number generator, math worksheet generator, sliding 15-puzzle). Parts that explain how to use different debugging tools and techniques to find errors in your code are very helpful and practical. This is an extremely important topic that is almost never dealt with in beginner textbooks.If you are not a complete beginner and you want to refresh and upgrade your HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills, let the "drama" format of this book not disrupt you. It is easily readable but it still offers in-depth explanations of every part of code used, with focus on general as well as language-specific principles.The last third of the book is an abridged HTML, CSS and JS reference, which makes it possible to use the book without any external sources. This is especially important for beginners, who get confused by many different styles and forms in which one and the same information is presented over different sources. And, finally, a tiny but useful curiosity about the printed edition (yes, I actually own one) - different parts of the reference are made easily accessible by a thumb index.I will use the book to help me motivate my students. Definitely worth buying.

What sets this book apart from most of the others / online webpages with JavaScript references is the fact that most of the chapters include a student-teacher dialogue. This dialogue succeeds in breaking the "tension" and making the reading flow much less tedious. In addition it also includes a lot of "common sense" questions that many people want to know but hesitate to ask.Even though i have been programming for quite some time now (15+ years) i still found some new tricks to try out.I would highly recommend this book to anyone starting along the path of a HTML programmer as well as someone who want to check if he's doing everything... by the book ;)Just a note - i was given the book as a gift hence no verified purchase.

Good book!