Customer Reviews

jQuery: Visual QuickStart Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'm glad I bought this book. It serves as it's title suggests, giving you a quick, painless start to using jQuery. The book's general layout is to use a single page to show you the functionality of a single jQuery method. Don't expect to see any in-depth description with this book. You'll definitely want to read another or do some online work after reading it, but after you finish this book, you will realize that jQuery is not as intimidating as you may have thought, which will make your reading of subsequent jQuery books easier.

I didn't expect this to be an entirely satisfying reference on the subject, but what really irritated me is that this book is chock full of errors that should have been caught before it was published. Most of the errors won't prevent the scripts from running, and in the cases where it would, if you have any experience with html, you'll realize the error as you're typing the script. For instance, for most of the first half of the book, a script is used that creates a button so that you can test the jQuery method being covered. Time after time after time, the code for the button didn't include a closing bracket... easy enough to pick up on, but it should have been easy for a technical editor to see also. There are also a few sentences such as: "Here's something else thing you can do with jQuery wrapped sets."

This book is worth buying if you are brand new to jQuery. It will make the other books that are a little bit more heady easier to digest. If you would like to be a technical reviewer, you might want to contact Peachpit Press. Apparently, they need one.

This installment in the Visual QuickStart series is another predictably useful volume. Like some of the other books in the VQS series this one is primarily a cookbook of code samples. Want to know how to hide an HTML element? Check pages 16-17. Want to know how to bind an event handler to an event? See pp. 82-83. Want to employ visual effects such as fading page elements in and out? Or slide elements up and down? It's all here and lots more.

The downside of this cookbook approach is that much of the book is boilerplate. As you proceed through the book, you quickly become familiar with the drill. Each two-page section covers a single jQuery feature. Each one starts with a few short paragraphs of explanation and is followed by sample code and step-by-step instructions for entering it. Some of this repetition is tedious and unnecessary. You don't need to tell a JavaScript coder to "open a text editor (such as Microsoft WordPad)..." in every example throughout the book (and there are dozens of examples). I'm pretty sure your average software developer can figure that part out on his or her own.

And most of the sample code changes little from page to page. In general, only a few lines vary with each example. Do we really need, for example, separate examples for fade in and fade out? For slide up and slide down? One wonders if there's some padding going on here. Also, there's also a lot of empty space on most pages. I've got to think that we could save a few trees by eliminating the empty space and condensing the rest down to the essentials. Granted, it's always crystal-clear the way it's presented. But the code is all available for download from the Peachpit site (which is great!). Anyone who is going to code for jQuery is going to access it that way so why repeat things over and over? The paper could have been put to better use by providing more detailed explanations or more examples.

Although most of the explanations throughout the book are clear I did find one explanation of jQuery's functionality a bit misleading. On p. 62 the book explains the html() function's behavior as follows: "... you can replace all the <div> elements with <span> elements..." And on p. 63, the book reiterates "... to rewrite the HTML for the <div> elements, converting them into <span> elements..." That's not an accurate description of what happens. What actually happens is that the *contents* of the <div> elements are replaced with the <span> elements.

And on pp. 64-65 the attempt, in code, to replace the text of several <div>s is erroneous. The code contains symbolic elements (">" and "<") where the literal characters are needed. And the example seems to confuse the very issue that is being explained, specifically, replacing the element's text rather than its HTML. Yet, the sample code tries to replace both text and HTML but ends up doing it incorrectly. Because of the problem of literal vs. escaped characters what is intended as HTML comes out as just text. But aside from these two examples, all of the other sample code worked as expected.

One problem I did experience, which was not a fault of the book, was some odd behavior when testing the animation effects in various browsers. Internet Explorer, in particular, displays some odd artifacts with elements jumping around or resizing in unattractive ways when fading elements in/out or showing/hiding them. You'd think that by IE8 Microsoft would have gotten their act together. Firefox 3.5 had its share of quirks in this respect also. What I do wonder is whether there are some techniques that developers use to avoid or mitigate these odd behaviors. Lots of websites use JavaScript in this way and they work smoothly. What are their secrets? Does jQuery have any answers? If so, I didn't find them in this book.

And, I found at least one example in the book (Script 1.13) which was not included in the downloadable samples.

Having said that, I did find this book to be a very helpful introduction to jQuery. I had dabbled briefly with jQuery before but found its cryptic syntax a bit off-putting. As a result, I turned my attention to Dojo and YUI. However, still not being satisfied with either of those I decided to have another look at jQuery. This book quickly clarifies the notational peculiarities and gets to work showing you how to do useful things with jQuery. In particular, the book highlights one of jQuery's specialties, a broad range of tools, which are based on the CSS selector concept, for selecting HTML code elements. And jQuery extends the CSS concept to offer additional capabilities such as the ability to select an HTML node which contains some specified text. These are features that aren't offered by the other major JavaScript toolkits as far as I know.

I found the AJAX chapters to be particularly enlightening. I had used AJAX techniques before and was aware of how cumbersome it can be to code everything manually. The jQuery functions encapsulate much of the AJAX boilerplate code, along with cross-browser compatibility--which is a headache in AJAX, to make the technique much easier. And the book's AJAX examples elegantly illustrate the power that jQuery brings to bear in this area with some very simple examples.
There's a lot to jQuery and the toolkit delivers it in an elegant, concise way. I have a much better appreciation for its power and usefulness now. As a result, I'm considering switching to jQuery as my primary JavaScript toolkit.

There's really a lot of functionality to jQuery and it now appears to me to be easier to access than it previously did. Concise sample code is great. For that, at least, I give the book high marks. Each example focuses on one thing and one thing only. You can easily copy and paste the relevant code into any web page you might be working on and you don't have to cut out any extraneous material or figure out what dependencies there may be on code in other areas of the sample page. Or, conversely, you can start with a sample code page and build on it to get where you're going. There's lots here and I'll be referring to this book and its sample code regularly during the coming months.

In spite of my quibbles, the Visual QuickStart series is a tried and true formula that works. Several titles in the series have been reliable hands-on guides that have provided me with quick entrée into various technologies. This title is no exception. Here's a listing of the chapter titles from the jQuery Visual QuickStart Guide:
1. Essential jQuery
2. Selecting Elements the jQuery Way
3. Working with Elements the jQuery Way
4. Working with Events
5. Visual Effects and Animation
6. The jQuery Utility Functions
7. Jumping into Ajax
8. Using the Full Power of Ajax
9. Using the jQuery Widgets
For more info, visit the Peachpit website:

jQuery: Visual QuickStart Guide

I don't usually trash books but the jQuery Visual QuickStart Guide comes close to a work of fiction. The problem is with the errors in the examples that really interfere with the ability of the reader to quickly and easily learn jQuery.

However, if you like challenges and puzzles this is an excellent book as it provides real life examples of "What's wrong with this picture?" (Why won't the example run.)

Sorry. Cannot recommend.

This book is an excellent starter book for those looking to learn jQuery! I'm hooked - I've been a web designer for a couple of years now and I've been looking/waiting for something like jQuery to come along. As it takes some commonly used JavaScript functions, and breaks them down to make them VERY easy to use + cross browser compliant! This book goes from example to example - just try each one, see it work. Simple, and a great way to get started. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars was due to a couple of code typos on pages 91:

(alert(click event unbound'); $('#target').unBind('click', \ clicker); should read (alert('click event unbound'); $('#target').unBind('click', clicker);
(missing ' before click event and a unnecessary \ )

and on page 109 there is a missing ; which should follow the display: none text - But that's all I've found so far and I'm 85% done with the book.

It's not for someone completely new to web languages - you have to learn your HTML, CSS and some JavaScript first - but a nice thing to learn and add to your skills and ad cool animated content without having to be a JavaScript genius

Luckily I got this book from my local library. If I would've spent even $5 I would've felt ripped-off. This book does not explain anything! It just shows you what a general script looks like with absolutely no explanation for real world use at all. There are so many mistakes it makes me wonder if they just pushed it out the door asap to make some quick cash from the "JQuery" name. Please take my word for it, it's horrible. [...]. I've only read 3 chapters and have already found at least one script in each chapter that does not work at all. [...] I could go on but why waste my time...

The intro mentions a link to download the code for the example files. Not only is the link spelled wrong, but the example files are nowhere to found on the Peachpit site. This alone is reason enough to not recommend this book. There's really no excuse for this kind of slip-shod editing.

One reviewer had it right. The code samples in this book are pretty good but there is WAY too much boilerplate code introducing each code sample. Seriously, you can intro the code the first few times you presentit. We're smart readers. We can get it. Fill the book with more examples instead of useless boilerplate filler.

I also wish the Kindle Edition had code as actual text so I could mark it up and highlight it instead of every example being a screenshot.

Decent coverage of Jquery's capabilities, but i have to agree with another reviewer. Looks like the book was thrown together rather quickly, and poorly edited. Some examples are totally incorrect. Next time find an editor who can read code.

The first few chapters were error free. Then every other lesson contained incorrect code. Every the downloaded scripts wouldn't work. Not a way to get a jump start on a new technology. I love the Jump Start series. But this edition should never have been distributed. Sorry.

I can't believe the author has a Ph.D. from Cornell - how did he lose all self-respect to write this junk?
Every single sample starts out with step 1: "Use a text editor (such as Microsoft WordPad) ...". It's all wasted and repetitious text. The code for one web page is presented in full; then 5 lines are added and all the code is AGAIN presented in full. All pages are written in 2 columns, but many have one column completely blank! (This is a modern variant on "This page intentionally left blank"). The book could easily be shortened to one-tenth the length. Better you should learn online and get the zero-length edition.

After this, I will probably automatically skip titles from the same publisher (Peachpit Press) when I am shopping.