Customer Reviews

Learning jQuery: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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One of the valid criticisms of the profusion of JavaScript frameworks is lack of documentation. This valuable book is the best possible boost to jQuery, one of the most popular frameworks in the pack. This documentation provides a gentle introduction to jQuery concepts and at the same time gives you the tools and examples to do some wickedly cool stuff.

Although jQuery is advanced JavaScript, you don't have to be an advanced scripter to use it or to follow the flow of this book. In fact, the book makes very clear that, aside from the particular advantages of this framework, jQuery will be especially welcomed by Web workers who are familiar with the value and syntax of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Someone who knows CSS well yet is weak on JavaScript will have no trouble at all slipping in advanced functionality to Web pages or applications with the help of this guide.

I have reviewed many books dealing with Web tech, CSS, and JavaScript. Even with the best of these books, I have often complained of lack of attention to scripting the display and behavior of data tables. This book totally eclipses every other book I have studied in this regard. As a designer of Web reporting tool interfaces, with a heavy use of data display, this book would get a 5-star rating for that alone.

The fine chapter on scripting data tables is not alone of course. The book handily deals with form manipulation and all sorts of approaches to dynamically modifying Web pages.

The book comes with not one, but two supporting Web pages where you can see the code in action and download it for play and profit.

I think getting this book is a no-brainer if you want to pick up on the latest practical trends in Web development -- as well as save yourself a lot of work and fuss.
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I'm a huge fan and avid user of jQuery and have been extremely impressed by the documentation provided on the jQuery website. The one thing that documentation lacks, however, is really contextual examples that drive home some bare essentials of JavaScripting with the jQuery library. Learning jQuery - a book by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg - is an excellent introductory book for those that are thinking about using (or struggling with) jQuery.

jQuery, while a fairly high level JavaScript library is a beautiful thing but can be very daunting to a developer that is new to JavaScripting or is coming from a dissimilar library, being thrust full bore into a `new' way of doing old tricks. (Which jQuery is great at by the way...it makes the new ways super sexy, sleek, and easy). The authors do a great job of explaining what jQuery is and why it is such a powerful tool.

Throughout the book are examples on traversing and manipulating the DOM, event handling, leveraging jQuery's JS effect capabilities, AJAX, etc; many of which are built off of previously detailed examples, allowing the reader to easily grasp what is going on and why a chunk of code was used.

While I feel this book is primarily an excellent introductory source for diving into the world of JavaScript development with jQuery, the fairly seasoned jQuery user (like myself) may find a trick or two that they hadn't quite thought of... As I read through, I found a few choice bits that allowed me to make my own code more efficient!

My only real complaint with the book is the index at the back. There are a number of jQuery functions that are discussed within the chapters yet weren't referenced in the index. A small nitpick, I know, but I'm a sucker for a good index :)

So. Overall, I think the book is a good thing to keep on the bookshelf, whether a you are a jQuery n00b or not. There's always a co-worker/friend/programming buddy that will want to learn jQuery and what better way to get them rolling on there own than a link to the jQuery docs and a sweet book?

Having authored about 25 computer books on programming and published about 200 ([...]), I found Learning jQuery a real treasure. I am a real noobie in jQuery and the book assumes that yoiu are proficient in both css and javascript. I discovered jQuery almost by accident, while I was struggling to tame some of the new features in Dreamweaver (effects). I was blown away by all the power it offered and the enormous number of plugins that allow you to do some really great things on your web page.

The authors teach jQuery in a really wonderful graduate fashion which builds on your previous knowledge. They amplify examples to help you see the way it works, and they reveal the hard way to do something then show how jQuery can make it so much easier.

The authors show an immense understanding of the person coming to jQuery.

Mitch Waite, former publisher of Waite Group Press

PS I would have loved some more illustrations, but I highly recommend the book. I am hoping someone like O'Rielly comes out with a Head First beginners guide and Peachpit does one of there great Visual QuickStart Guides.

While there are a lot of Javascript libraries out there, there's something special about jQuery. Right when you start to use it, it just feels right. Of course, trying to sell a manager or a co-worker on, "it just feels right", rarely works; it's important to be able to list out the reasons why something is good. This book does that for you - the very first chapter starts out by taking what you feel in your gut and wrapping up in 12 powerful bullet points. Not only does this set the expectations for the rest of the book (which are met with flying colors), it gives those of us who cannot easily codify our thoughts a pre-packaged strategy for introducing jQuery into the work place.

Having read the jQuery Reference Guide prior to this book, it is clear that Learning jQuery does not cover the entire breath of the jQuery library. It does cover a good deal of the selectors, DOM traversal and modification methods, AJAX functionality, event binding, and plug-in architecture, but to be sure, there are things that are either glossed over or left out. This should, however, not be viewed in a negative light. Instead of being incomplete, Learning jQuery takes the most important and powerful aspects of jQuery and covers them in-depth.

This book is all about the in-depth, iterative example! After every chapter, I found myself reflecting on how thorough and well done the examples were. Each one starts out with a simple piece of code (probably the way you or I would accomplish some task). Then, it adds something. Then, it factors something out. Then, it encapsulates something. Then, it adds some more functionality. At each step, I kept thinking, "Brilliant! I can't believe I never thought of doing it that way." At the end, not only do you understand the jQuery concepts in a way that the reference guide could never communicate, you've completely changed the way you want to write your own code.

I think it is very important to note that all of the code examples are done in a "progressive enhancement" way. By this, I mean that all of the examples are designed to function at some level, even for web users who have disabled Javascript in their browsers. It is only through Javascript that the advanced features are added to the page once the document object model has loaded. By "upgrading" the page functionality in this way, not only do you keep your markup very clean, you ensure that the page works for everybody. I've never even thought about doing things this way; I'm telling you, this book is inspiring.

While there is too much great content to cover on a piece by piece basis, there were many aspects that I thought were very exciting to learn about. Of particular interest is the use of CSS class values as a means for hooking into the DOM. Traditionally, I have only used CSS to format elements within the page. Many of the examples in this book use arbitrary CSS classes, not for formatting, but for targeting parts of the DOM using jQuery. For example, a column header might be given the class, "sort-asc", not because it has any formatting associated with it, but rather because it allows the sort direction of the column to be defined in a way that can be easily accessed and located via jQuery selectors. This concept really blew my mind! I had never thought about using classes for anything but formatting, but I can see how powerful this technique can be.

One of the other things that I wanted to point out is that this book describes writing jQuery code that takes place over time. That is, it explains how to write jQuery code that does not fire immediately, but rather executes several times over the course of time. I have hardly seen any documentation or examples of jQuery code that uses the setTimeout() or setIterval() methods, but this book has an example that uses these methods and explains their application quite well.

In addition to the jQuery information, just by fact of how in-depth the examples are, this book ends up teaching you more about Javascript in general. I like to think of myself as having a fairly good understanding of Javascript, and even I came across several useful functions that I had never heard of before, but am already excited about using in future projects.

This book also has the best explanation of Javascript Closures that I have ever read. In fact, they have a whole Appendix (Appendix C) dedicated to the concept of Closures. I don't know if it's just because I am at a point where I can start to understand what it is that they are, or if this book just does an excellent job of describing what they are, how they work, and how they relate to jQuery, but something about their explanation just took the concept and drove it home. So much of the power of this library is derived from the nature of Closures, so, while the understanding of Closures is not necessarily essential for the basic usage of jQuery, it is certainly essential to understand when creating complex, object-like functionality. I almost want to say, if for no other reason, you should get this book for Appendix C alone; that's the kind of eureka moment that I had when reading it.

Overall, this is a great book, and a must-read for anyone who is serious about learning how to write powerful and concise jQuery code. While the reference guide is good, it cannot hold a candle to this book in terms of teaching; in my experience, it is only through great, in-depth and iterative examples that learning can take place and Learning jQuery provides these type of examples almost in excess.

A decent exposition. Good intro to JQuery. Index is very poor. Basic functions (like ".ready") are not listed. I shouldn't have to sequentially search the book to find something I read a few days before. When I instead find myself using Google it's clear there is a problem.

The more people learn about jQuery the more they use the word FUN! This is a great boot camp book on doing jQuery. The AJAX examples are in PHP and I would have liked some in ColdFusion, but that didn't cause a single problem in understanding the teaching in the book! If you are doing internet and need to start making your pages "dynamic" with javascript and the DOM this is a right way to do it. Get the book and you may never know what pain you miss. If you have been doing prototype or some other solution, check out the book... you will love where jQuery is headed.

I hate to give this one star, as it is probably an excellent book...

but i just wanted to give a heads up to anyone thinking about purchasing this one (as I almost did)... that there is a newer version available from the same authors.

It is called "Learning Jquery 1.3" and covers the most recent version of jQuery. I give that title 5 stars. These authors have done an excellent job. In fact, it is probably the best IT book i have read as far as simplicity yet also being thorough. I dont normally review books, but I am very impressed with what they have done here. But, like I said, this one covers an older version of jQuery and probably should not even be sold anymore. Get "Learning jQuery 1.3".

This is a great book, to a point. It explains the concepts behind JQuery and gives some good, easy-to-follow examples. It's a good tutorial and introduction to using JQuery for AJAX, enhancing the UI, manipulating data, etc.. So why did I give this 3 stars?

Because in the end, what matters most to me is if I can USE the book on an ongoing basis. I'm not going to be able to, because the index for this book is WAY too sparse. It's missing many, many topics. For example, something as simple as the click() and clone() functions aren't in there, and neither is noConflict (which allows JQuery to play nicely with other libraries. And that's just the "C's".

I'm not asking for a complete reference - I understand that Packt does have a JQuery reference. But it would be nice to be able to find things I just read about 15 minutes ago! The poor index means I'm going to end up barely using this book at all.

Like many of the other reviewers have stated, this is a great book. It addresses a fundamental shortcoming in Javascript documentation but more importantly the publishing of jQuery books solidifies jQuery itself as a top-shelf Javascript library.

I found the Learning jQuery title was easily usable like an expanded reference guide by jumping from chapter to chapter picking up the necessary bits that I needed as I worked through adding jQuery into my existing application. If I needed straight dirt, I went to the reference guide to look up the API and its parameters and if I needed some working examples I dug into the Learning jQuery for all the details.

The authors did a fine job of writing examples (not too simple and not too esoteric or advanced). While I expected the book would make me a more powerful jQuery user, I didn't expect that it would also make me a stronger Javascript programmer. My application is looking and working a lot better as a result.

I'd recommend these titles to anyone who is either:

A) Looking for a Javascript library to standardize on or use heavily for their projects. jQuery has great community support and authors are supporting it also.

B) Existing jQuery "dabblers" who want to master the library as well as become better programmers (the information provided on Javascript closures alone is great!)

Kudos to the authors - well done!

As a rails developer most of my experience with javascript libraries has been with prototype and scriptaculous, but I've never been quite happy with them. The helper methods built into ActionView make simple tasks a breeze, and I've played with the UJS plugin to improve the separation of content and behaviour, but even then the weight of the libraries and the comparable simplicty of tasks like iteration offered by jQuery has always made the grass over there look quite a bit greener.

So when Karl told me that he and Jonathan Chaffer were working on a book about jQuery and offered to send me a copy that seemed like the perfect opportunity to begin making the switch. (that comment should be taken as a disclaimer, by the way.) In the end the timing was fortuitous as I've ended up working on a couple of drupal projects (jQuery is included with drupal from version 5 onwards) and having to integrate some jQuery code into a rails project, so I've needed to take the lessons learned from the book and quickly put them into practice.

The book takes a gradual pace, introducing the library, and how it handles selectors, events and effects, before moving into DOM manipulation, AJAX and handling forms. Standardistas will be pleased that there is a strong emphasis on progressive enhancement, always starting with pages that achieve their basic intent and then using jQuery to improve the user experience. The authors place considerable emphasis on the importance of providing all users with a solid basic experience and show how jQuery makes it very easy to do so.

More experienced javascript developers may find the pace of the book a little slow (and might prefer to look out for the companion reference volume). The core audience is likely to be those who may have dabbled with the odd snippet, or perhaps used tools that generated javascript for them, but want a step-by-step tutorial that shows how to use jQuery to do things cleanly while building general understanding. Nevertheless, the coverage of more advanced topics like closures is solid and a good reminder even for the more experienced developer.

There were a couple of areas that could have done with a little more exposition, such as the fairly cursory coverage of the difference between GET and POST in HTTP requests (being a purist, I was really looking for mention of PUT and DELETE too), and the fact that without more work one of the shopping cart examples could leave the user thinking their updates had been saved when there was no mechanism to actually make the updates on the server-side. That said, hopefully by that point in the book most readers will be alert to such things and know that the examples are not necessarily production code.

If you're looking to consolidate your javascript skills and like the look of jQuery, or, like me, you find that sometimes sitting down and reading a book is the best way to familiarise yourself with something, Learning jQuery is well worth your time and money. You can find it at packt, amazon US, amazon UK and all sorts of other places.