JavaScript books and IDEs at 50% Off – Including one by an 8-bit Game Dev Legend

If you have a need (or just want) to get into JavaScript development there are some great offers to be had right now! A whole stack of books from O’Reilly at 50% off and a really great IDE.

First up is the WebStorm IDE from JetBrains. If you’re one of those developers who just can’t code with code-insight then this is about as invaluable an IDE as they come. It’ll inform you of JS coding errors in real-time, offer code optimisation suggestions and of course cross-project code-completion too. Licenses are 50% off until November 27th 2011 and include a free upgrade to version 3.0. That makes is just £27 (around $60) so well worth considering.

As wonderful an IDE as WebStorm is, I personally get on much better with Sublime Text 2. This is not an IDE, just an Editor. But it’s the best editor I’ve ever had the pleasure of using! Extremely fast, super-slick in operation, great colour schemes and fonts – and the best feature I’ve ever seen in an editor: The mini-map overview. There’s no discount on it, sorry 🙂 But as it only costs $59 I’m not sure you even need one. I find myself using it to edit even AS3 files now. Grab the free download and evaluate it for as long as you like.

As for books O’Reilly have got a “JavaScript Path to Mastery” deal on until January 19th 2012. Put in the code at checkout and get 50% off the e-books or 40% off the printed counter-parts. There are some really great books on offer including High Performance JavaScript and the essential reading JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. I personally recommend this one, it helps explain just why JavaScript does some of the weird things it does, which is essential if you’re coming to it from AS3. There are also a load of HTML5 books available, but to be honest the only one that interested me was the one on Canvas, but you may find some that you need.

Interestingly they’ve also got a book on offer called Supercharged JavaScript Graphics by Raffaele Cecco.

If you’re old enough that name might be familiar to you as he was an 8-bit game developer of some notoriety. Responsible for creating gaming classics like Exolon, Cybernoid 1 and 2, Stormlord and Deliverance, I picked up his book with keen interest. It’s a bit of a hodge-podge, diving all over the HTML5 spectrum of new tech, but the section on canvas blitting and game design is really nice. I’d like to have seen a whole book just on this from him 🙂

There you go. If you’re going down the JavaScript route the above links should save you plenty of money, which is always handy around this time of the year.

Posted on November 18th 2011 at 6:35 pm by Rich.
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