A framework that condenses lines of clunky JavaScript into elegant, concise code is a temptation too hard to ignore.
This popular library has overtaken its competitors because it radically transforms how you perform animations, add Ajax interactivity, and integrate rich UI components into your website.
But while it all sounds great, too often people have no idea where to start. If that’s you, your problem is now solved.
Earle & Craig have taken this complex and detailed topic and condensed it into a step-by-step guide that’s easy to use.
With this brand new book, you’ll master all the major tricks and techniques that jQuery offers. Even a fledgling web developer will be able to make jQuery work straight out of the box.
jQuery: Novice to Ninja is:
perfect for any jQuery user, regardless of whether you’re at the beginner, advanced, or somewhere in-between stage
relevant, being an up-to-date guide that thoroughly covers the latest jQuery, version 1.4
highly practical, offering out-of-the-box solutions that enable you to be productive immediately
Grab your own copy today so you can use your ninja skills to unleash some powerful jQuery of your own!
Looks great, but reading the sample chapters - I hate to say it, but it really annoys me when Zebra Striping tables is used as an example for jQuery - this violates the whole separation of concerns idea, and should be done with CSS!
@stormrider: Separation of concerns is only a general principle meant to keep your code more maintainable. If your HTML is static (I know this is less and less frequently the case, but bear with me), then manually adding a class to every other row in your markup, and keeping those classes up to date as you add or remove rows, is harder than maintaining a small jQuery file, especially if you also want to handle highlight-on-hover in the same script.
Of course, if your markup is being generated server-side, that’s a non-issue, and the CSS nth-child selector also lets you handle that, but until it’s widely supported patching the holes with jQuery is perfectly acceptable IMO.
It’s also a really great example to show newbies how jQuery selectors work
@Glasspoole: d’oh! as you probably guessed, since jQuery 1.4 was released only a few weeks ago, we were using the alpha releases while working on the book. I was pretty sure I’d cleaned it all up, but it looks like I missed that one. I’m fixing it now, and we’ll be uploading the new archive right away. Thanks for the spotting!
Yep, I don’t pump up every book release, but have to say this is the funnest book we’ve put out… probably ever, to be honest. Maybe it’s just my sense of humour, but I laugh every time I thumb through it.
Plus the fact that Earle is ridiculously good with JavaScript doesn’t hurt. Have you seen his particle system stuff ?
I think saying ‘it’s too inconvenient’ or ‘its too hard’ is a poor excuse for using JS for something that should be done using CSS. If it isn’t that important, why not go back to using font tags and mixing the HTML/CSS/JS all in one again?
It is a good teaching tool though, just annoys me that it’s example that is used so often!
Curious question. Just read the sample chapters (I now want this book) and it says (Page 7 under “What’s the downside?”) that the “core jQuery library” is “about 19KB for the basics”. How do I get a 19KB version of jQuery? The minified version of jQuery 1.4 is 70.6KB.
Hey BrandonK. There are two things that explain that number: one, jquery 1.3.2 was a little smaller than jquery 1.4, at around 59K compressed, and second, that number accounts for gzipping. It’s the number that was on the jQuery homepage next to the download button. Currently, now that 1.4 is out, it says 24KB.
@Stormrider: What I meant was that the only reason “it should be in the CSS” in the first place is because that makes things “easier” and “more convenient”. Separation of concerns isn’t good in any abstract sense, it’s just a good idea because it makes things more maintainable, and makes our lives easier as developers.
@ryal001: Well, the book is about jQuery, so if you want to learn jQuery then it will teach you that, but if you don’t want to learn jQuery then I guess it’s not for you.
Have you checked out the sample chapters? They can give you a good idea of the type of content that’s in there.
@ryal001: I think jQuery has appeal on two levels.
Newbies/non-coders like jQuery because they can get stuff to happen without writing a lot of code.
The advantage to more experienced coders (perhaps like yourself if you’ve read all those books) would more likely be development speed. Libraries like jQuery, Mootools and Prototype take care of a lot of the browser peculiarities and also give you a lot of pre-built functions for the sorts of things you typically do a lot of in JS.
Some argue that there is a cost involved with having a library of functions attached to a page if you only use 2 or 3 of them. And that’s certainly true. In theory it does likely does increase bandwidth and render times by a small amount.
nice topic :)P