places/books to learn javascript?

[zoombapup]

Hi all,

I'm making my game UI using webkit + javascript and wondered if anyone knew of any useful websites, books or whathaveyou on learning javascript?

I'm particularly kind of semi confused on the syntax of it still (its supposedly ECMA, but looks very different to flash, which is also supposed to be ECMA).

Anyone know of similarly good refs for creating web-client based UI's that look a bit more gamey rather than app-ey?

[walkal]

I've found books by Danny Goodman useful, but there have been plenty of other JavaScript books published in the last few years. The Ajaxian website has had a number of posts about JavaScript resources, and some about games. One example of a JavaScript game UI is my Chihuahua word puzzle, but I'm not sure how gamey it looks!

[richtaur]

Please don't link to w3schools, they promote bad practices and have out-of-date information

- Mozilla's Brendan Eich created JavaScript, so their website always has the best documentation: https://developer.mozilla.org/En/JavaScript
- I haven't read it but this is/was supposedly a good resource for beginners: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000486/
- For intermediate/advanced users, I recommend: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748/

Lastly, I'll mention quickly that JS is definitely not the best platform for building games. I say this from experience (here's one I made). But that said, it's still a lot of fun and is starting to gain traction. It'll be a lot more realistic once HTML5 is widely supported.

There's also a JavaScript gaming site which is really excellent. Have fun!