1. Chapter 1 Good Parts

   1. Why JavaScript?

   2. Analyzing JavaScript

   3. A Simple Testing Ground

2. Chapter 2 Grammar

   1. Whitespace

   2. Names

   3. Numbers

   4. Strings

   5. Statements

   6. Expressions

   7. Literals

   8. Functions

3. Chapter 3 Objects

   1. Object Literals

   2. Retrieval

   3. Update

   4. Reference

   5. Prototype

   6. Reflection

   7. Enumeration

   8. Delete

   9. Global Abatement

4. Chapter 4 Functions

   1. Function Objects

   2. Function Literal

   3. Invocation

   4. Arguments

   5. Return

   6. Exceptions

   7. Augmenting Types

   8. Recursion

   9. Scope

   10. Closure

   11. Callbacks

   12. Module

   13. Cascade

   14. Curry

   15. Memoization

5. Chapter 5 Inheritance

   1. Pseudoclassical

   2. Object Specifiers

   3. Prototypal

   4. Functional

   5. Parts

6. Chapter 6 Arrays

   1. Array Literals

   2. Length

   3. Delete

   4. Enumeration

   5. Confusion

   6. Methods

   7. Dimensions

7. Chapter 7 Regular Expressions

   1. An Example

   2. Construction

   3. Elements

8. Chapter 8 Methods

9. Chapter 9 Style

10. Chapter 10 Beautiful Features

1. Appendix Awful Parts

   1. Global Variables

   2. Scope

   3. Semicolon Insertion

   4. Reserved Words

   5. Unicode

   6. typeof

   7. parseInt

   8. +

   9. Floating Point

   10. NaN

   11. Phony Arrays

   12. Falsy Values

   13. hasOwnProperty

   14. Object

2. Appendix Bad Parts

   1. ==

   2. with Statement

   3. eval

   4. continue Statement

   5. switch Fall Through

   6. Block-less Statements

   7. ++ −−

   8. Bitwise Operators

   9. The function Statement Versus the function Expression

   10. Typed Wrappers

   11. new

   12. void

3. Appendix JSLint

   1. Undefined Variables and Functions

   2. Members

   3. Options

   4. Semicolon

   5. Line Breaking

   6. Comma

   7. Required Blocks

   8. Forbidden Blocks

   9. Expression Statements

   10. for in Statement

   11. switch Statement

   12. var Statement

   13. with Statement

   14. =

   15. == and !=

   16. Labels

   17. Unreachable Code

   18. Confusing Pluses and Minuses

   19. ++ and −−

   20. Bitwise Operators

   21. eval Is Evil

   22. void

   23. Regular Expressions

   24. Constructors and new

   25. Not Looked For

   26. HTML

   27. JSON

   28. Report

4. Appendix Syntax Diagrams

5. Appendix JSON

   1. JSON Syntax

   2. Using JSON Securely

   3. A JSON Parser

6. Colophon

The animal on the cover of JavaScript: The Good Parts is a Plain Tiger butterfly (Danaus chrysippus).Outside of Asia, the insect is also known as the African Monarch. It is a medium-size butterfly characterized by bright orange wings with six black spots and alternating black-and-white stripes.

Its striking looks have been noted for millennia by scientists and artists. The writer Vladimir Nabokov--who was also a noted lepidopterist--had admiring words for the butterfly in an otherwise scathing New York Times book review of Alice Ford's Audubon's Butterflies, Moths, and Other Studies (The Studio Publications). In the book, Ford labels drawings made previous to and during Audubon's time in the 19th century as "scientifi-cally [sic] unsophisticated."

In response to Ford, Nabokov writes, "The unsophistication is all her own. She might have looked up John Abbot's prodigious representations of North American lepidoptera, 1797, or the splendid plates of 18th- and early-19th-century German lepidopterists.She might have traveled back some 33 centuries to the times of Tuthmosis IV or Amenophis III and, instead of the obvious scarab, found there frescoes with a marvelous Egyptian butterfly (subtly combining the pattern of our Painted Lady and the body of an African ally of the Monarch)."

While the Plain Tiger's beauty is part of its charm, its looks can also be deadly. During its larval stages, the butterfly ingests alkaloids that are poisonous to birds--its main predator--which are often attracted to the insect's markings. After ingesting the Plain Tiger, a bird will vomit repeatedly--occasionally fatally.If the bird lives, it will let other birds know to avoid the insect, which can also be recognized by its leisurely, meandering pattern of flying low to the earth.

The cover image is from Dover's Animals. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed.