Head First jQuery [Paperback]

Ryan Benedetti (Author), Ronan Cranley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2011 | Series: Head First

Want to add more interactivity and polish to your websites? Discover how jQuery can help you build complex scripting functionality in just a few lines of code. With Head First jQuery, you'll quickly get up to speed on this amazing JavaScript library by learning how to navigate HTML documents while handling events, effects, callbacks, and animations. By the time you've completed the book, you'll be incorporating Ajax apps, working seamlessly with HTML and CSS, and handling data with PHP, MySQL and JSON.

If you want to learn—and understand—how to create interactive web pages, unobtrusive script, and cool animations that don't kill your browser, this book is for you.

• Use jQuery with DOM to overcome the limitations of HTML and CSS
• Learn how jQuery selectors and actions work together
• Write functions and wire them to interface elements
• Use jQuery effects to create actions on the page
• Make your pages come alive with animation
• Build interactive web pages with jQuery and Ajax
• Build forms in web applications

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ryan Benedetti holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Montana and works as a Web Developer/Multimedia Specialist for the University of Portland. He works with Flash, ActionScript, Adobe's Creative Suite, Drupal, Liferay Portal, and Apache's Jakarta Velocity Templating language.

For seven years, Ryan served as Department Head for Information Technology and Computer Engineering at SKC. Prior to that, he worked as editor and information systems specialist for a river, stream, and wetland research program in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana.

Ryan's poems have been published in Cut Bank and Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse. He spends his free hours painting, cartooning, playing blues harmonica, making Flash learning toys, and practicing zazen. He spends his best moments with his daughter, his son, and his sweetheart, Shonna, in Portland, OR.

Ronan Cranley is the Senior Web Developer/Systems Manager at University of Portland, Oregon. He has worked on an array of different projects in PHP, VB.Net, C# and Java. These include a client-side GIS system, a homegrown content management system, a calendaring/scheduling system, and a jQuery/Google Maps mashup. Ronan also serves as the SQL Server DBA for the University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 540 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Original edition (September 29, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449393217
• ISBN-13: 978-1449393212
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for Beginners. Too Visually Stimulating Perhaps. October 22, 2011

By David Hayden

Format:Paperback

This is my first Head First Series book. I have heard great things about Head First books and mainly picked it up to experience the series.

I have to say the information is very much for beginners. The book starts you out at the basics of organizing your website assets, downloading jQuery, and introducing one to the basics of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, etc. The later chapters start introducing AJAX, PHP, MySQL, JSON, and XML from scratch, too. If you don't have PHP and MySQL, the appendices help you visually install them. If you are beginner, you just can't ask for more than that.

Throughout the book Head First jQuery teaches via a Problem-Solution approach. A client needs some changes to their website and the book walks you through collecting the requirements, introducing the necessary features in HTML, CSS, jQuery, and JavaScript that help solve the problem, and last begins coding the problem. Pictures, games, and repetition are constantly used through the book to help reinforce the learning of the material.

For me, personally, there were a bit too many images, games, and repetition. I found it difficult to get in any kind of reading rhythm with the non-standard flow of text and information. It was kind of cute at first and overall I found the images and games appealing and useful, but it was a bit too much and too distracting for me. At times it felt more like a chore to learn the material.

Again, a great book for beginners that teaches a lot of breadth as opposed to depth. Lots of images for those that learn best visually. Prepare yourself for a different writing/learning style if you are not familiar with the Head First Series.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars jQuery, simply, for beginners October 10, 2011

By mko

Format:Paperback

It might sound strange, but first thing I am grateful to Ryan and Ronan is mentioning TextWrangler in the beginning of the book. This way I got familiar with very simple, useful, and free (free as in free beer) editor for Mac OS

I haven't used jQuery before, and I wanted to see what it is all about. First of all, I like to learn by examples - and you got them here. All in one piece - zipped - directly on your hard drive from the Head First Lab web page (each example contains corresponding jQuery library). This is nice. You simply don't have to copy-paste everything you see in the book into your text editor. When it comes to the content. Well, this is always hard thing to judge. I know people who hate Head First series. They say it is not sophisticated enough. I am, on the contrary, a great fan of Head First. jQuery, like any other Head First series book, gives you simple, straight overview of the topic. OK, it will not provide you with as much text as other books, but hey, "A picture is worth a thousand words". And you will find lots of them here. However, if you consider yourself a hacker, don't buy it. It's rather for beginners. If you are a beginner - I'd consider buying it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A basic introduction to jQuery and scripting November 25, 2011

By Andy Shuping

Format:Paperback

O'Reilly Publishing provided me access to an electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

jQuery is fast becoming one of the most useful and popular JavaScript frameworks being used and being developed for future markets with jQuery mobile. In this massive book (over 450 pages) and over 11 chapters the reader will learn how to download and setup jQuery and introduce the basics of jQuery. The later chapters briefly introduce AJAX, PHP, MySQL, JSON, and XML and how they work with jQuery to build a more interactive webpage. There also a couple of apendecies to help you get a test environment set up on your local computer. One thing to note about this book is that you do need experience with webdesign and it does help to have some experience with scripting languages.

One of the first things that stands out about this book (and the Head First series in general) is the bright, colorful, and plentiful images used to help illustrate concepts and how jQuery works. They also provide illustrations on how to walk through the specific problem at hand, which is often nice to see in a visual format...even if it is just notes on a pad of paper. The other highlight of the Head First series (and this book is no exception) is that it's written in a clear easy to understand language, it's written for the novice programmer--one that's still learning how programming works and for someone that's looking for an overview of the language. In this book the authors give you a specific situation--a client wants work done on their website-- walk you through how to solve the problem step by step, and with illustrations to help you solve the problem. This method can be a very helpful way to introduce aspects of jQuery as it walks through problems that you might encounter when building/developing your website and ways that jQuery can over come that problem.

But like every "Head First" title the illustrations won't work for everyone. I find it helps if you're coming from a nontraditional background or from a more creative bent (left brain.) And even then sometimes the images and graphics can be overwhelming, which is a problem that I find sometimes in this book. I found that thT images, while helpful in the beginning, often start to become overwhelming as you get more and more into the problem being solved and make it a bit difficult at times to concentrate on following the step by step instructions.

Overall this is a fairly good introduction book and easy to read if you're coming from a nontraditional programming background (and are left brain) then this might just be the book for you to learn more about scripting languages. If you're more right brain then you might want to look for a more traditional book on jQuery, such as "Learning jQuery, Third Edition" from Pact.