In the computer world, cookbook / tips / "hack" style books are a funny thing. Unlike food cookbooks you purchase when you have a specific culinary goal, scripting cookbooks are typically bought without much knowledge of the information that they are going to present to you. This can be doubly so when you are purchasing from an online vendor that has not made the table of contents (TOC) available. At the time I write this, Amazon.com has not. O'Reilly's does, and I encourage you to visit this title's TOC page first before you purchase: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jvdhtmlckbk/toc.html

For what this book covers, it is covered very well. The included scripting projects are indeed useful, efficiently written, presented in a user friendly manner, and as a whole contain very few errors. Each script example is presented by introducing a web design problem, followed by a solution discussion, a working script, and a follow-up if needed. None of the code examples in the book are included, but again, O'Reilly's web site for this book has the files available for download.

This is not a stand-alone title, it is not for JavaScript beginners, and it is not a cookbook that provides generic solutions. This is a great companion book to the author's other book, "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference" (ISBN 1565924940) and David Flanagan's "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" (ISBN 0596000480). Web developers looking to better utilize HTML and JavaScript will find (or already know) that these two mentioned books are invaluable. As for this cookbook, if you see something in the TOC that interests you, make the purchase and you certainly wont regret it. But if you don't, feel comfortable skipping it.