What JavaScript topics can't those new to the language be without?

Question

I recently got involved with the jQuery Project and the PromoteJS movement has inspired me to spend some time writing a free, comprehensive book on JavaScript fundamentals for beginners (I feel you need to understand what JS is about to make the most of libraries).

What I would like to target are topics that both total beginners and those that know jQuery, but not the underlying JavaScript would find both educational and useful to know.

What topics would you suggest this cover?.

Off the top of my head, Variables, Expressions, Statements, Functions, Objects, Closures, Scope wouldn't be bad additions, but I'm wondering if going beyond this to cover inheritance, development patterns/anti-patterns etc would be overkill.

Again, your thoughts and comments on this would really assist in these early planning phases. Thanks!

• leonm: How is your book going to be different from JavaScript: The good parts oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748 ?
• user166390: "...know jQuery, but not the underlying JavaScript..." sounds like a false statement.
• user477703: As I mentioned below, I'm considering whether framing the book around the idea of building up from a readers existing knowledge of something like jQuery may assist in their learning - for example, breaking down common abstracted functions they may use and showing them how these are constructed using basic javascript development principles etc. If it's a consensus that JS the good parts is more than enough, i'm happy to drop the idea. Just want to know what others think.
• Frank: Could you host the sources for this book over at github? This way we all could do forks and make suggestions for the book.
• user477703: I wouldn't mind doing that at all. I think the idea worked well for Rebecca Murphy (who wrote the jqfundamentals.com book below) and an open-source book with multiple contributors just gives it the chance to be even stronger in terms of usefulness/correctness.

Answer 1

There's already a great, free Javascript book actually.. http://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html

EDIT: There's also already a free great jQuery fundamentals book:

http://jqfundamentals.com/book/book.html

• user477703: Thanks for the share. I came across both of those during my research and know one of the authors. They look quite comprehensive but I'm wondering whether shaping how JS is taught around their existing knowledge of jQuery may be an interesting way to go about it. For example - here is how you do X in jQuery. Did you know this is made possible by Y in vanilla JS and here are the fundamentals behind it. Would that be useful or would it complicate things?. The jQ fundamentals book tends to do a 50/50 split in terms of..here's the JS, now here's jQuery, rather than breaking the latter down.
• JAL: @user477703 are you talking about 'vanilla JS' or 'vanilla DOM API'?
• user477703: @Alex JL - Sections would ideally cover both simple cases of vanilla JS and move onto interaction with the DOM, however the former would moreso be there to build learning foundations.
• Frank: That would be wounderful! Most users that learn JQuery or whateverJS library does not dive into their JS-lib and learn how to do the underlying stuff. I would love to see a such book that views both sides, JQuery and how to do it the vanilla JS way.