jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery [Paperback]

Dan Wellman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2009

Create powerful front-end interfaces for your web applications with jQuery UI. This book is for front-end designers and developers that need to quickly learn how to use the jQuery UI User Interface Library. To get the most out of this book you should have a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and will need to be comfortable using jQuery, the underlying foundation of jQuery UI.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Who this book is written for?

This book is for front-end designers and developers that need to quickly learn how to use the jQuery UI User Interface Library. To get the most out of this book you should have a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and will need to be comfortable using jQuery, the underlying foundation of jQuery UI.

What you will learn from this book?

• Organize different sections of related content as tabs and accordins and save space on your page
• Display messages, images, and interactive content like forms using the dialog widget
• Use sliders for volume and color control of your applications by dynamically scrolling left and right, displaying different ranges
• Allow your site visitors to select dates from the calendar using date picker widget
• Enrich your interface with auto complete: start typing the first few letters of a name in your address book and the application will do the rest
• Provide a drag-and-drop mechanism to let users directly rearrange elements around the page
• Make a range of elements of a group selectable and take collective actions on them
• Create a page with content boxes on it that can be sorted into various positions to suit the visitors personal preference
• Add flair to your actions with animation effects

About the Author

Dan Wellman lives with his wife and three children in his home town of Southampton on the south coast of England. By day his mild-mannered alter-ego works for a small yet accomplished e-commerce production agency. By night he battles the forces of darkness and fights for truth, justice, and less intrusive JavaScript. He has been writing computer-related articles, tutorials, and reviews for around five years and is rarely very far from a keyboard of some description.

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847195121
• ISBN-13: 978-1847195128
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,223,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Wellman is a web developer and author based in the UK. By day he works for a small, boutique agency that delivers unique solutions to a range of clients from local small businesses to national coporations. By night he writes books and tutorials on a range of subjects, mostly centered around web development and jQuery.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some credit for being first to market, but..., March 6, 2009

By 

Cody Lindley (Boise, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery (Paperback)

First and foremost, I would like to mention that this book review and the opinions contained within it reflect my own personal thoughts. While I might contribute and participate on the jQuery & jQuery UI open source project, my intent here is to speak as an individual representing my opinions as an individual.

The author Dan Wellman, of the jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery book from Packt Publishing should be applauded for bringing the first jQuery UI book to completion. You will learn a lot from this well written book about the general usage and implementation of the UI widgets, interactions, and effects. However, the book suffers from an unavoidable downfall: its content is already deprecated. And with technical books timeliness matters.

The books downfall is that it does not cover the most recent advancements and significant changes made in the evolution of the jQuery UI project. The book's focus is clearly based on versions 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2 of jQuery UI (using jQuery 1.2.6). This needs to be mentioned because the release of this book is unfortunately close to the release of version 1.7 of the library. This new release is a significant update.

Specifically, the book differs from the new 1.7 release in the following ways:

- In 1.7 each plugin has been significantly re-factored and optimized from its previous condition.

- As of 1.6rc3, the CSS framework has evolved from the previous system mentioned/used in the book to a new and improved system. All plugins have been significantly updated/modified to use this new framework.

- ThemeRoller (v2.0) has been updated and uses the revamped CSS framework. The book for the most unfortunately ignores this invaluable feature of the Library.

- jQuery UI 1.7 requires and uses jQuery 1.3+

- jQuery UI 1.7 includes a new plugin, the progressbar, which was not featured in the book.

- The autocomplete widget was removed in 1.7, but is covered in chapter 7 of the book.

Now in all fairness to the author, the jQuery UI team and project have been in a transition/growing phase in the last year. Bringing this book to fruition with any sort of up-to-date technical completeness would have been challenging if not impossible. So, as a potential purchaser of this book what you need to clearly understand is that it is specific to the 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2 releases of the UI library. And that release compared to the most recent release are significantly different.

Setting aside the book's lack of coverage of 1.7 and judging it on the merits of what it covers, I would have to say that the book itself is actually very good. It's well written and contains in-depth information about the jQuery UI widgets, interactions, and effects as it pertains to releases 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2. Additionally, it provides in-depth implementations of the widgets and interactions in a realistic context (real world scenarios).

A reader should pick up this book with confidence, but also be prepared to bridge the gap between the information it provides and the current release of the library (highlighted above). With all that said, I recommend giving the book a read, even if only because it's the sole book written on the topic to date.

To sum up, JQuery UI 1.6 provides thorough instruction on how to configure and style the widgets released with jQuery UI 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2. If you're currently working with jQuery UI 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2, or would like to add jQuery UI to a project that must be compatible with jQuery core 1.2.6 or earlier versions, then this book is for you.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect blend of reference manual and tutorial, March 30, 2009

By 

Ben Nadel (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery (Paperback)

Last night, I finished reading jQuery UI 1.6 by Dan Wellman (published by PACKT Publishing). Released in January 2009, it's slightly behind the times - jQuery UI 1.7 just came out a few weeks ago. But, even if it's not completely up to date, it is still a great book that covers the fundamentals of the jQuery UI library, all the existing widgets, and even touches on the CSS widget framework (something that was really fleshed out in v1.7).

I have never used any of the jQuery UI widgets before, so this is a topic that I was excited to explore. I've been looking for a good UI framework that I could build into and extend within my applications. I know that jQuery is the only Javascript framework that I want to work with, and after reading jQuery UI 1.6, I believe that the jQuery UI library is something that will add tremendous value to my software.

jQuery UI 1.6 is the perfect mix of reference manual and real-world tutorial. It covers every aspect of the jQuery UI behaviors, utility classes, and widgets in a systematic way; but, it keeps it interesting by iteratively applying new ideas to easy-to-follow examples. It does a great job of getting you familiar with all the configuration options, methods, and events, and really gets you to start thinking about where you might apply such aspects in your own programming.

One of the most impressive things about the jQuery Javascript Framework in general is the large amount of functionality that you get with just a little bit of code. The jQuery UI library takes this concept and almost makes a caricature of it; with just a constructor call and some simple settings, the jQuery UI library provides extremely rich, highly interactive features to your software. Take that and then add things like internationalization (i18n) and the ThemeRoller and you have a really robust library with very little effort.

The jQuery framework really brought event-driven programming to Javascript by simplifying and unifying the way events are captured and handled. The jQuery UI library follows nicely on this path. Every action that takes place in jQuery UI widgets or behaviors triggers a number of events, all of which can be listened for and reacted to. For example, with the sortable behavior, dragging an item from list to another triggers the following events:

start
activate
sort
change
beforeStop
stop
remove
update
receive
deactivate

You'll have to look at the book or the documentation to see what each of these events represents; but, with such a robust event model, the jQuery UI library gives you ample ability to monitor and react to all aspects of the UI library behaviors. The jQuery UI library black-boxes its implementation, but it gives you plenty of opportunity to follow along and even modify the way things are working.

The jQuery UI library is narrow in its API but extremely deep in its functionality. Learning how to leverage its entire set of features is not going to take place overnight. But, for anyone looking to get more comfortable with the jQuery UI library, I highly recommend jQuery UI 1.6 by Dan Wellman as a starting point. Like I said above, it's the prefect mix of real world tutorial and reference manual. It will get you solid on the basics and itching for mastery.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is a good commute book, May 3, 2009

By 

Edward Tanguay (Berlin,Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery (Paperback)

This book is ideal for for reading while you are not in front of a computer, e.g. while commuting, as much of the code is listed, property controls are usually listed out in full for you to read, and code that is added in the examples is in bold, so that you can get an idea what is possible with jQuery UI without trying every example out. Reading the book through gives you a good idea of the extent of jQuery UI and how much time it would save you in a real project.

However, when I sat down with the book to try out the examples I found it missing the "get up and started" section and seems to assume I had already been using jQuery UI. Chapter 1 devotes only a couple paragraphs and a picture talking about downloading and setting up a "programming environment" (which was nothing more than "copy the files to c:\jqueryui"). I found I had to spend my own time at http://jqueryui.com/download figuring out which of the components to download for what, which theme to use, which version to use and what it all meant in terms of using jQuery UI in a project. I want an author of a book to have done all this homework and then show me the "paths of least resistance" so I can get the technology up and running for me as quickly and easily as possible. In the end I created my own "how to" for others to get jQuery UI up and running which complements this book well: http://tanguay.info/web/index.php?pg=howtos&id=21.

So I would say that if you need to read a book about jQuery UI while commuting or sitting beside the pool on vacation, this book is perfect, and it is the first of its kind. Otherwise if you just need to get up to speed on jQuery UI and get a couple of examples running so you know how it works, go to http://jqueryui.com/download, unzip, locate the demos directory and spend a weekend tweeting the examples: you'll be a quasi jQuery UI expert on Monday. Then, put this book in your backpack and read through it during commute time to get ideas on how to tweak the various jQuery UI controls.