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JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual
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This is a very well written book. I admit I was not completely new to
jQuery when I read this, so I'm not sure about the learning curve, but I
felt the book does a better job of fully explaining things than some
other jQuery books do. It often provides line by line explanations of
code rather than just summaries or generalizations. The book is a bit
longer than some other jQuery books because of this added detail, and
also because it really does cover a lot of material.
I enjoyed the writing style/tone of the book - it's not overly technical/serious, but also isn't over the top.
I also really appreciate the unqiue approach it takes of teaching you everything practical you need to know about "raw" javascript in order to enhance jQuery without getting into details many users may not need to know. If you're wondering, the content is roughly 3/4ths jquery and 1/4th pure javascript.
I do have a few complaints - the book does occasionally spend a bit too much time talking about specific plug-ins and how to use them. Usually it walks you through you how to do a simple task and then uses a plug-in for a more advanced version of it (such as galleries and form validation). I have mixed feelings about this (especially when some of these plug-ins have complete documentation on their websites) but since this is really just a personal opinion I didn't take a star off for it. There is also very little content related to making your own plug-ins, which is a cool feature of jQuery that a few other books do touch on. I found this odd given how often the book talks about plug-ins. There are a few typos here and there but I did not find any that affected the success of the examples - mostly just grammatical things.
I enjoyed the writing style/tone of the book - it's not overly technical/serious, but also isn't over the top.
I also really appreciate the unqiue approach it takes of teaching you everything practical you need to know about "raw" javascript in order to enhance jQuery without getting into details many users may not need to know. If you're wondering, the content is roughly 3/4ths jquery and 1/4th pure javascript.
I do have a few complaints - the book does occasionally spend a bit too much time talking about specific plug-ins and how to use them. Usually it walks you through you how to do a simple task and then uses a plug-in for a more advanced version of it (such as galleries and form validation). I have mixed feelings about this (especially when some of these plug-ins have complete documentation on their websites) but since this is really just a personal opinion I didn't take a star off for it. There is also very little content related to making your own plug-ins, which is a cool feature of jQuery that a few other books do touch on. I found this odd given how often the book talks about plug-ins. There are a few typos here and there but I did not find any that affected the success of the examples - mostly just grammatical things.
