Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With some books you can quickly locate the detail you require from the index, retrieve, adapt and use in your own scenario and then put it back on the shelf for a later date. This book, although you can do that, I would suggest you read it in it's entirety so that you don't miss some of the hidden away gems that will aid you in your future jQuery development. A great foundation builder for both jQuery and the less known UI library, I highly recommend it for beginner to intermediate programmers.

The organization of this book, like most of the O'Reilly cookbooks, is excellent. You will not be paging through the book trying to find that little nugget of information, it will be easy to find again when you discover you need it.

The book covers a number of general Javascript topics as well as JQuery specific topics. Any one of the chapters alone could well be worth the price of the book.

This is a true gem among other jquery books. Down-to earth, very practical and immediately applicable. Examples are consise, but well thought-out, and it covers a great number of different cases.

I would call myself a beginner jquery coder, but during the first hour of browsing through this book, I learned more about this framework than from reading any of the more typical "beginner's guide to..." type of book I've tried. Better yet, I could immediately improve my own website with several nice tricks from this book.

Users attempting to learn jQuery by example using this "cookbook" need to look elsewhere. The purpose for a book targeted at developers (especially one labeled a "cookbook") is to show developers examples of code which accomplishes a specified task. The end result for the code snippets in the book should be a working piece of code that does something - however mundane that may be. It doesn't need to be a perfect work of art but at the very least, the reader should be able to replicate the code as-is and have it actually work. This is very definitely not the case with this book. Of the code samples I've tried (duplicating them exactly as printed in the book) a number of them do not work. Enough of them do not work that it does absolutely no good to continue reading.

This book wastes little time with fluff, and gives you applicable value with every page. Great examples, relevant code. It doesn't merely outline the API. It gives you examples, then provides a concise explanation of the example. Very useful resource! I would recommend this book to anyone learning to use jQuery.