Learning jQuery: Better Interaction Design and Web Development...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 380 pages
• Published by: Packt Publishing June 29, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1847192505
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1847192509
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Book Description
jQuery is a powerful JavaScript library that can enhance your websites regardless of your background. In this book, creators of the popular jQuery learning resource, learningquery.com, share their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm about jQuery to help you get the most from the library and to make your web applications shine. For designers, jQuery leverages existing CSS and HTML skills, allowing you to dynamically find and change any aspect of a page. This book provides a gentle introduction to jQuery concepts, allowing you to add interactions and animations to your pages-even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled. For programmers, jQuery offers an open -source, standards-compliant, unobtrusive approach to writing complex JavaScript applications. This book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features, as well as provide you with a reference to the jQuery library to return to again and again. This book begins with a tutorial to jQuery, followed by an examination of common, real-world client-side problems, and solutions for each of them. A detailed reference rounds off the book, making it an invaluable resource for answers to all your jQuery questions. Who this book is written for This book is for web designers who want to create interactive elements for their designs, and for developers who want to create the best user interface for their web applications. The reader will need the basics of HTML and CSS, and should be comfortable with the syntax of JavaScript. No knowledge of jQuery is assumed, nor is experience with any other JavaScript libraries required.

About The Author


Jonathan Chaffer is the Chief Technology Officer of Structure Interactive, an interactive agency located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There he oversees web development projects using a wide range of technologies, and continues to collaborate on day-to-day programming tasks as well.

In the open-source community, Jonathan has been very active in the Drupal CMS project, which has adopted jQuery as its JavaScript framework of choice. He is the creator of the Content Construction Kit, a popular section for managing structured content on Drupal sites. He is responsible for major overhauls of Drupal's menu system and developer API reference.

Jonathan lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, Jennifer.

Karl Swedberg is a web developer at Structure Interactive in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he spends much of his time implementing design with a focus on "web standards"--semantic HTML, well-mannered CSS, and unobtrusive JavaScript.

Before his current love affair with web development, Karl worked as a copy editor, a high-school English teacher, and a coffee house owner. His fascination with technology began in the early 1990s when he worked at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and it has continued unabated ever since.

Karl's other obsessions include photography, karate, English grammar, and fatherhood. He lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, Sara, and his two children, Benjamin and Lucia.

Reader Reviews
§ One of the valid criticisms of the profusion of JavaScript frameworks is lack of documentation. This valuable book is the best possible boost to jQuery, one of the most popular frameworks in the pack. This documentation provides a gentle introduction to jQuery concepts and at the same time gives you the tools and examples to do some wickedly cool stuff. Although jQuery is advanced JavaScript, you don't have to be an advanced scripter to use it or to follow the flow of this book. In fact, the book makes very clear that, aside from the particular advantages of this framework, jQuery will be especially welcomed by Web workers who are familiar with the value and syntax of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Someone who knows CSS well yet is weak on JavaScript will have no trouble at all slipping in advanced functionality to Web pages or applications with the help of this guide. I have reviewed many books dealing with Web tech, CSS, and JavaScript. Even with the best of these books, I have often complained of lack of attention to scripting the display and behavior of data tables. This book totally eclipses every other book I have studied in this regard. As a designer of Web reporting tool interfaces, with a heavy use of data display, this book would get a 5-star rating for that alone. The fine chapter on scripting data tables is not alone of course. The book handily deals with form manipulation and all sorts of approaches to dynamically modifying Web pages. The book comes with not one, but two supporting Web pages where you can see the code in action and download it for play and profit. I think getting this book is a no-brainer if you want to pick up on the latest practical trends in Web development -- as well as save yourself a lot of work and fuss. § Comment | | (Report this)