Forum Moderators: open
Anyone know of any good reference tools for javascript?
Preferably an interactive help file that I can load from my local machine
It's tough to sift through the junky sites.
Firefox has a sort of useful Javascript debugger but I still don't find it useful at my semi-early stages of learning Javascript.
One thing I feel that makes up a large portion of that junk is the need to add styling and html and not actually concentrating on the neccasary code.
One thing I have had an issue with in PHP is that I've started trying to learn it knowing that the purpose is to share information between sources. While I am a patron of the Visual Quick Start series the version of the book I have has the reader messing with the clock.
If I were to start it out I'd cover the basics, php open and closing tags, how to include a file, how to set a string, and how to call a string. I'd take it a notch up and show the difference between using values contrasting HTML as my site uses PHP mostly for saving me hordes of work on repetive HTML.
But thats my aim and everyone has a different aim. I think learning should be based off of mainstream ideas. For example you may need to do some calculations serverside and I may want to manipulate code for various useragents. Both of those should be subsets in a sense.
All I can suggest is find a favorite place (like I have with webmasterworld) and work with the people you enjoy on the code that you need and want. Yes there are good sources out there but the problem is that they are mostly junk. I occasionally make reference to w3schools. #*$! tends to come in handy occasionally. DHTML nirvana is decent if you're in to looking up DHTML. CSS Zen Garden is another notable site.
