Acknowledgments

Brendan Eich of the Mozilla organization is the originator and chief innovator of JavaScript. I, and many JavaScript developers, owe Brendan a tremendous debt of gratitude for developing JavaScript and for taking the time out of his crazy schedule to answer our questions and even solicit our input. Besides patiently answering my many questions, Brendan also read and provided very helpful comments on the first and third editions of this book.

This book has been blessed with top-notch technical reviewers, whose comments have gone a long way toward making it a stronger, more accurate book. Waldemar Horwat at Netscape reviewed the new material on JavaScript 1.5 in this fourth edition. The new material on the W3C DOM was reviewed by Philippe Le Hegaret of the W3C; by Peter-Paul Koch, Head of Client-Side Programming at the Dutch Internet consultancy and creation company Netlinq Framfab (http://www.netlinqframfab.nl); by Dylan Schiemann of SitePen (http://www.sitepen.com); and by independent web developer Jeff Yates. Two of these reviewers maintain useful web sites about web design with the DOM. Peter-Paul's site is at http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/. Jeff's site is http://www.pbwizard.com. Although he was not a reviewer, Joseph Kesselman of IBM Research was very helpful in answering my questions about the W3C DOM.

The third edition of the book was reviewed by Brendan Eich, Waldemar Horwat, and Vidur Apparao at Netscape; Herman Venter at Microsoft; and two independent JavaScript developers, Jay Hodges and Angelo Sirigos. Dan Shafer of CNET's Builder.Com did some preliminary work on the third edition. Although his material was not used in this edition, his ideas and general outline were quite helpful. Norris Boyd and Scott Furman at Netscape also provided useful information for this edition, and Vidur Apparao of Netscape and Scott Issacs of Microsoft each took the time to talk to me about the forthcoming Document Object Model standard. Finally, Dr. Tankred Hirschmann provided challenging insights into the intricacies of JavaScript 1.2.

The second edition benefited greatly from the help and comments of Nick Thompson and Richard Yaker of Netscape; Dr. Shon Katzenberger, Larry Sullivan, and Dave C. Mitchell at Microsoft; and Lynn Rollins of R&B Communications. The first edition was reviewed by Neil Berkman of Bay Networks, and by Andrew Schulman and Terry Allen of O'Reilly & Associates.

This book also gains strength from the diversity of editors it has had. Paula Ferguson is the editor of this edition and of the third edition. She's given the book a thorough and much-needed going over, making it easier to read and easier to understand. Frank Willison edited the second edition, and Andrew Schulman edited the first.

Finally, my thanks, as always and for so many reasons, to Christie.

—David Flanagan, September 2001