10 Free JavaScript Books

Eloquent JavaScript

By Marijn Haverbeke.

178 pages. Eloquent JavaScript introduces you to the JavaScript language. It also covers general programming concepts such as object-oriented programming. In the last leg of this book, you’ll get to learn about Node.js, which is an application for running JavaScript in environments beyond the browser.

JavaScript Enlightenment

By Cody Lindley. 141 pages. JavaScript Enlightenment deeply delves into advanced JavaScript language features. To give you an idea of how technical this book is: There’s a chapter dedicated solely to the null value, and another one just for undefined.

If you’d to learn the ins and outs of the language, read this book.

Learning JavaScript Design Patterns

By Addy Osmani. 33 web pages. Design patterns are conventional solutions to common tasks.

Using good design patterns will improve your code’s efficiency, security and quality, while bad ones — called anti-patterns — will lead you to trouble. This book is about JavaScript (and jQuery) design patterns, techniques and best practices.

The JavaScript Tutorial

By Ilya Kantor.

90 web pages. This online book will walk you through the basics of the JavaScript language. As the book progresses, you’ll be introduced to more advanced subjects such as object-oriented programming and regular expressions.

Human JavaScript

By Henrik Joreteg.

16 web pages. The premise of Human JavaScript is that within the realm of JavaScript, there’s a subset of features, tools, approaches and patterns that are optimized for people. This book is for developers who are interested in learning about JavaScript in the perspective of building web apps.

Speaking JavaScript

By Dr.

Axel Rauschmayer. 252 web pages. Speaking JavaScript is for programmers who want to learn how to write code with JavaScript. An assumption the author makes is that the reader is already a programmer who knows object-oriented programming and another language like PHP, Ruby, Python, C++, Java and so forth.

Building Front-End Web Apps with Plain JavaScript

By Gerd Wagner. 183 pages. This book is aimed at JavaScript developers and experienced programmers who would like to learn JavaScript hands-on, in the context of creating a fully-functional web application.

Programming JavaScript Applications

By Eric Elliott.

152 web pages. This book will teach you the techniques, approaches and best practices for building modern web apps using JavaScript and related web technologies such as JSON and NoSQL.

Single Page Apps in Depth

By Mikito Takada. 72 pages. The author of this book, Mikito Takada, aka Mixu, believes that “the best way to learn how to use something is to understand how it is implemented.” As such, this book goes through a general process of creating web apps with JavaScript and its other Web technologies.

DOM Enlightenment

By Cody Lindley. 121 web pages. The document object model (DOM) is a key concept that you must master if you’re serious about JavaScript. DOM Enlightenment is a technical guide to DOM scripting.