jQuery book recommendation

Question

Are there any good books for jQuery out there? The target audience is someone who is just getting started with javascript and related web client concepts, but finds it fairly easy to pick up as they go along.

Answer 1

Don't buy a book, use web tutorials. A book on the current version of JQuery will be out of date pretty quickly anyway and there are loads of great tutorials only a google search away.

I find jquery.com incredibly slow, but there are a lot of other good resources out there:

• jquery for designers
• Compilation of 65 jquery resources
• jquery and Ajax by IBM developerworks

Answer 2

Learning jQuery is a good intro. There is an accompanying reference guide which I haven't read, but I've heard it is also good.

Answer 3

I think Learning jQuery and jQuery in Action are the only two right now (besides reference guides that accompany each of those).

Answer 4

jQuery in Action is quite good, but you may want to supplement it with a book on JavaScript.

Answer 5

I think that a beginner would benefit from something like Head First Javascript. It's very helpful to get some background JS knowledge before you skip straight to jQuery.

For example - what are strings? What is a loop? When does javascript get run?

That last question tripped me up as I was learning - I didn't understand that $("img".click()) only runs ONCE on pageload to attach the click event.

So you can't add and remove click events based on changing page conditions, like classes:

If (condition) $(this).click(function() {do something;});
else $(this).click(function() {do a different thing;});

... you have to put your conditional statements inside the one click event that you get to attach:

$(thing).click(function () {
  if (A) {do something;}
  else {do a different thing;} 
});

Maybe this was a bit off topic, but the point is, it helps me when I learn how something works, because if I don't, eventually I will make a flawed assumption an I won't know why my code doesn't work.

Answer 6

I first learned about jQuery in JavaScript: The Missing Manual. It is by no means a comprehensive reference on all of JavaScript or jQuery, but it is a great "Here is what you need to know to do about 90+% of what you want to do..." book.

What sold me on the book and on going on to learn jQuery was the pragmatic advice it gives. In the chapter on the event model there was a sidebar that said (paraphrased): "Most JavaScript books have a big section about right here that tells you how to handle the differences between IE and other browser's event handling. Basically, we think you're wasting your time trying to do it the hard way when you should be using a library like jQuery that takes care of it for you."

That's the kind of advice you don't normally see in tech books...

Answer 7

Resig's book Pro Javascript Techniques is really swell. I would recommend it if they've every programmed before.

It starts off on OO concepts, and talks about the web model in general.

From there, it's a (example-heavy) ride into excellently though-through technique. jQuery used throughout, though understanding the purpose of JavaScript & behavioral scripting is really the key.

Answer 8

Please read this blog http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/370180.aspx

It contains a very good review

Answer 9

Books become obsolete fairly quickly, however, their documentation has gotten better with every release. They're also free!

There really is no single resource that is helpful when you're working with things like this, but as you go on, you will start to notice that the problems you run into are the problems everybody else runs into, and with some relatively light googling, you can get a pretty wide variety of answers to common problems.

The best way to learn is by doing, so I would suggest going through the documentation and trying out things on your own as you go. There is also a list of tutorials supplied on Jquery's website.

Jquery's Documentation and JqueryUI's Documentation

It's worth noting that JqueryUI is pretty finicky, and in most cases google, or a place like here, is your only hope.