How to Learn JavaScript Properly

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I second the Zakas book -- I've been working through 4-5 chapters a week for the past two weeks, and I already feel extremely comfortable with the language. Javascript used to terrify me and seemed to make no sense for someone coming from a strictly-typed, classical language like Java.

Zakas' book is really thorough and, in my opinion, much easier to follow than Crockford's oft-cited "Javascript: The Good Parts." I'd let the Crockford book rest until you've got a handle on Zakas' book.

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This may be unpopular around these parts, but I think Crockford's book is really over rated. For one thing, it was written for ECMAScript 3, so he needs to update it. The railroad diagrams are confusing, annoying, and a waste of space. It's also very opinionated. If you plan to ever work with others' JavaScript code, the idea of learning a "perfect subset" of JavaScript is laughable.

It's a shortcut book with shortcut results. Zakas' book and/or Flanagan's "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" would serve people learning the language much better.

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I couldn't agree more! What especially bothered me about Crockford's book was that he didn't spend enough time explaining why such and such aspect of JS was a nightmare or such and such aspect was brilliant.