Lucky me was given the opportunity to review Learning jQuery 1.3, so that’s what I’m going to do in this post. You can buy the book via this link, and the full 12% referral commission I get from your purchase will be donated to the Humane Society of Louisiana.
But don’t go clicking and buying just because you like puppies. Read on to find out if this book is right for you, and there’s even a link to a free chapter at the bottom of this post so you can get a feel for it.
First off, a disclaimer: I’m not a hardcore programmer by any means. Functions and arguments and variable scopings make my head spin. I’m more of a jack-of-all-trades web developer who knows enough programming to hack away at some Ruby on Rails or PHP or jQuery and come away with something nice. Rarely something perfect, but nice nonetheless.
Something for everyone
Learning jQuery 1.3 has something for everyone. If you’re new to jQuery, this book will ease you into it. Yes, you can probably find all the same information online (much of it at jquery.com), but you’ll learn it a lot faster by working through the examples in the book. (And then you can spend that saved time working on some projects that will more than cover the cost of the book.)
There are also lots of great tips for more advanced coders. I learned bunches from my thorough read-through, and I’ll be referring back to it often, especially Chapter 11: Developing Plugins. And of course there were dozens of pages that made my head hurt, but I’m sure they can be helpful to the hardcore jQuery students.
Highlights
A few things I especially liked about Learning jQuery 1.3:
- Progressive enhancement and graceful degradation promoted throughout.
- Alternative ways of achieving the same result are often noted and/or explained; pros and cons of each approach listed.
- Clearly stated when an example is just for demo purposes and not sufficient for real-world use.
- Several walk-throughs of refactoring code to adhere to DRY principles.
- Very good about using semantic mark-up; alert you on the rare occasions that they don’t and explain why.
- The authors are obviously experts, but are also excellent at breaking everything down and stepping the reader through examples.
- Geeky humor.
Lowlights
Not too much I can point to here. I’d probably do the gradient fade effect (page 283) and revising styles with JavaScript (page 290) a little differently, but aside from that I found myself either nodding along or having repeated a-ha moments throughout.
Free Chapter
Yup, no word of a lie: all of Chapter 4 from Learning jQuery 1.3 is here for your perusal.
In Chapter 4 you’ll be introduced to jQuery’s animation techniques and see how to hide, show, and move page elements with effects that are both useful and pleasing to the eye.
Download Chapter 4: Effects in PDF format.
Do it for the puppies
If this book sounds right for you, buy it via this link. Once again, any commission I earn will be donated to the Humane Society of Louisiana. Just think, you can help rescue a mistreated puppy while simultaneously learning about the benefits of caching jQuery selectors. Win-win.