This is arguably the best book on JavaScript. It's a great way to understand the prototypal language, and serves as a good guide on building "proper" code in th

This is arguably the best book on JavaScript. It's a great way to understand the prototypal language, and serves as a good guide on building "proper" code in the conventions best suited for the language. While I do think this is the best book to learn the language, I think you'll want to dive deep into a framework like jQuery to get things done. Straight JavaScript is very bare-bones, and you'll spend much more time in library code than with bare code. While I love this book, and I finally feel like I 'get' the somewhat odd prototypal style of JS, it didn't help me get things done any faster.