For the past couple years jQuery has been gaining in popularity, from a hot script with easy CSS selectors released by John Resig in 2006, all the way to jQuery 1.3.2, probably the most widely used Javascript library today. The jQuery core has been constantly expanding, offering new methods and performance tuning with every release, in addition to the wide variety of jQuery plugins that are released almost daily.
Known for publishing resources for the latest development trends, Packt Publishing has recently released an updated version their jQuery book: Learning jQuery 1.3, by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg of Learning jQuery (the website). This new resource provides an excellent introduction to jQuery as well as going into detail on some of its finer topics. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who is fairly new to jQuery—it will give you a great head start in this wonderful and complex library.
But even if you know jQuery inside and out (like I pretend to do), this book will still teach you a thing or two. In addition to providing different and better practices for the things you know, this book can help you stay current in a library that is constantly evolving. So read the chapter below, and if you don’t learn a single thing, don’t buy it :):
Chapter 4 of Learning jQuery 1.3: Effects
Starting off with a firm grounding in jQuery basics like selectors, events and effects, Learning jQuery 1.3 then goes into a few of my favorites: DOM manipulation the wonderfully simple jQuery AJAX API. After covering a couple specific jQuery solutions, the book ends with a discussion of useful plugins and how to develop your own. I’m really glad they shouted out the hard work of all the plugin developers, because jQuery wouldn’t be nearly what it is today without its countless plugins. And who knows, maybe QuickFlip will make it into their next book :).
Jon Raasch is a UX nerd and free-lance web designer / developer who loves jQuery, Javascript & CSS.
