Learning JavaScript, 3rd Edition

Chapter 21. Additional Resources

While my epiphany that JavaScript is an expressive, powerful language came some time ago, the journey of writing this book has driven that lesson home. JavaScript is not a “toy language” to be taken lightly or dismissed as a “beginner’s language.” You’ve made it through this book; you know that all too well!

My goal in this book was not to exhaustively explain every feature of the JavaScript language, much less explain every important programming technique. If JavaScript is your primary language, this is just the beginning of your journey. I hope I have given you a solid foundation that you can build on to become an expert.

Much of the material in this chapter is taken from my first book, Web Development with Node and Express (O’Reilly).

Online Documentation

For JavaScript, CSS, and HTML documentation, the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) is without equal. If I need JavaScript documentation, I either search directly on MDN or append “mdn” to my search query. Otherwise, inevitably, w3schools appears in the search. Whoever is managing SEO for w3schools is a genius, but I recommend avoiding this site; I find the documentation is often severely lacking.

Where MDN is a great HTML reference, if you’re new to HTML5 (or even if you’re not), you should read Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5. WHATWG maintains an excellent “living standard” HTML5 specification; it is usually where I turn first for really hard-to-answer HTML questions. Finally, the official specifications ...