jQuery Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for jQuery Developers (Animal Guide) [Paperback]

Cody Lindley (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0596159773 | ISBN-13: 978-0596159771 | Edition: 1

jQuery simplifies building rich, interactive web frontends. Getting started with this JavaScript library is easy, but it can take years to fully realize its breadth and depth; this cookbook shortens the learning curve considerably. With these recipes, you'll learn patterns and practices from 19 leading developers who use jQuery for everything from integrating simple components into websites and applications to developing complex, high-performance user interfaces.

Ideal for newcomers and JavaScript veterans alike, jQuery Cookbook starts with the basics and then moves to practical use cases with tested solutions to common web development hurdles. You also get recipes on advanced topics, such as methods for applying jQuery to large projects.

• Solve problems involving events, effects, dimensions, forms, themes, and user interface elements
• Learn how to enhance your forms, and how to position and reposition elements on a page
• Make the most of jQuery's event management system, including custom events and custom event data
• Create UI elements-such as tabs, accordions, and modals-from scratch
• Optimize your code to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure peak performance
• Learn how to test your jQuery applications

The book's contributors include:

• Cody Lindley
• James Padolsey
• Ralph Whitbeck
• Jonathan Sharp
• Michael Geary and Scott González
• Rebecca Murphey
• Remy Sharp
• Ariel Flesler
• Brian Cherne
• Jörn Zaefferer
• Mike Hostetler
• Nathan Smith
• Richard D. Worth
• Maggie Wachs, Scott Jehl, Todd Parker, and Patty Toland
• Rob Burns

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cody Lindley, editor of jQuery Cookbook, brings together over a dozen contributors, all of them key people in jQuery's ongoing development process. Each focuses on subjects they've worked with and often helped create.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (December 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596159773
• ISBN-13: 978-0596159771
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great O'Reilly Cookbook January 6, 2010

By Adam Barney

Format:Paperback

The jQuery Cookbook, like the many other Cookbook series of books from O'Reilly proves to be an extremely valuable addition to any web developer's bookshelf. There's nothing unexpected here - it's a book full of practical solutions to hundreds of everyday problems.

The first chapter, "jQuery Basics" is meant to be a crash course introduction to jQuery, but it likely won't suffice if you're new to jQuery, and certainly won't prepare you if you're relatively unfamiliar with javascript in general. This book is primarily intended for the everyday jQuery developer who wants a reference for specific issues that come up in projects.

If you are familiar with jQuery basics, a cover-to-cover reading of this book will take you to the next level, but most developers will only read the entries that pertain to the problems they face during development.

The jQuery Cookbook was written by the jQuery community - people who have faced these issues in their own development and have solved them in the real world. I found that a majority of the recipes were well written and clear with properly tested and working code. All-in-all, the jQuery Cookbook is a useful and reliable resource for practical jQuery development.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book on jQuery to Get Started December 19, 2009

By Frank Stepanski

Format:Paperback

jQuery is considered the most popular and easy to use JavaScript library. It used by websites big and small with large corportations like Google and MSN. Although there are a few books on jQuery already and the jQuery website ([...]) has lots of useful information, there is still a lacking of a good jQuery book that can show the reader some very useful ways to use jQuery. This is an excellent book on showing the introductory to intermediate developers how to use jQuery efficiently and quickly.

Chapter 1 : jQuery Basics
Chapter 2 : Selecting Elements with jQuery
Chapter 3 : Beyond the Basics
Chapter 4 : jQuery Utilities
Chapter 5 : Faster, Simpler, More Fun
Chapter 6 : Dimensions
Chapter 7 : Effects
Chapter 8 : Events
Chapter 9 : Advanced Events
Chapter 10 : HTML Form Enhancements from Scratch
Chapter 11 : HTML Form Enhancements with Plugins
Chapter 12 : jQuery Plugins
Chapter 13 : Interface Components from Scratch
Chapter 14 : User Interfaces with jQuery UI
Chapter 15 : jQuery UI Theming
Chapter 16 : jQuery, Ajax, Data Formats: HTML, XML, JSON, JSONP
Chapter 17 : Using jQuery in Large Projects
Chapter 18 : Unit Testing

The author takes the reader through the entire gambit of jQuery lerning from the basics of selecting elements, utilites, and effects to advanced event handling, ajax and plugins and much more.

This 'cookbook' can be used as either a learning tool for the beginner or as a reference book for the seasoned jQuery user who needs to find a script or technique quickly.

A great book and definitely worth buying if you really want to learn jQuery.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight-forward, clear, simple, like jQuery itself! November 27, 2009

By S. Gittens

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Much anticipated jQuery cookbook that was well worth the wait.

This cookbook will serve any (beginner to intermediate) jQuery/web 2.0 developer with 150+ easy to grasp "recipes". Nothing groundbreaking here, just great scripts that do 95% of what you need to do faster/efficiently. END NOTE: I was hoping for more AJAX-jQuery or JSON related material. This book with jQuery in Action is a good combo.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Focused or Essential January 16, 2011

By margot VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

A mixed bag. This is an assemblage of overview and how-to articles on a variety of jQuery methods and tricks. I have not been able to use it as a cookbook, although that may change in the future, and I have no plan to throw it out anytime soon. There is no single go-to guide for jQuery, at least no published book that is more convenient and informative than the jQuery site itself, or developers' problem-solving sites (such as stackoverflow.com). For a reference book, Learning jQuery 1.3 and the jQuery 1.3 (or 1.4) Reference Guide, both from Packt, are more comprehensive, while Manning's jQuery in Action gives the most readable and friendly learning environment.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Difficult for beginners, not useful for intended audience. February 14, 2011

By A. Sanborn

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is very full, and fills the reader in on some good insights about using jQuery, but it functions more like a glorified syntax list/reference, not a cookbook.

Many of the examples isolate a single concept and use the alert box function to show how it works. You can't call it a cookbook when the recipes show you how to select certain elements and then tell the user that you've selected them. This recipe alone serves no particular purpose.

It would be much more useful if the author showed concepts working together to reach a sensible goal that one might need to accomplish in real development. The reader of this book has to do lots of back and forth to flexibly understand how to use jQuery.

On top of that, there is so much content, and the author explains concepts in so much detail that it is out of a beginner's range and patronizing for its intended audience, which is people who already have a decent grasp of the concepts in use.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars OK but not fantastic February 11, 2012

By Tibal

Format:Paperback

Having played a bit with jQuery on a few projects, I wanted to understand a bit more the core of jQuery and see how usual problems can be solved. Being a fan of O'Reilly books, I purchased jQuery cookbook.

The approach is OK for somebody who has basic knowledge of Javascript and CSS : it relies on examples ("How can I .... with jQuery ?") to cover things a jQuery developer might want to know : include the libraries, write a plugin, use an existing plug-in, use and customize jQuery-UI plugins etc, and also mentions topics such as performance or testing.

While most examples are actually rather good, some of them just make you think "there MUST be a better way to do it".

In my opinion, the main problem is that, being a work by "the jQuery community" rather than a book written by one or two authors, it lacks coherence : each developer seems to write jQuery code in his own way and no effort was made in this book to homogenize the code examples. This might really hurt your brain if you plan to read it from cover to cover.

So as a conclusion : it can be useful for a beginner who just wants to know how to solve a specific problem, but do not expect to find a reference that you can read from cover to cover. For this purpose, the online jQuery documentation is really really great !