jQuery in Action

• #3 in Best Javascript Books

21 Reviews

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jQuery is a Javascript framework that aims to let you think structurally and conceptually, rather than worrying about syntax and other details. In that largely succeeds, and so does this remarkable book.

Every technical book should be like this one; having written a few myself, I know that's a tall order. "jQuery in Action" is concise but clear, humorous but not silly, and answers all the questions it raises, quickly. The reader is never left wondering "But what about..." for more than a sentence or two. The authors clearly gave a lot of thought to pedagogy, because things are explained in a clear way which progresses naturally from chapter to chapter. Factor in the extremely readable style and the handsome diagrams, and it's easy to see why reading this book is a sheer joy.

For each major feature of jQuery, this book provides a "Laboratory page", a kind of interactive HTML playground where you can try the feature out using different options. The remarkable flexibility of these pages is a testament to both the power of jQuery and to the imagination and creativity of the authors.

Perhaps the most commendable feature of "jQuery in Action" is, however, its unflinching honesty. All too often authors are interested in selling you on an approach or a product, and they tend to gloss over the rough spots to win you over. These authors refuse to do that. They present their topic just as it is, describe its merits, and let the reader decide. You should, of course, decide to buy this book!

I usually don't write reviews, but I read tons of them. However, after starting "jQuery in Action" I just have to write about this book. After reading the first two chapters I could tell that this book is a "keeper". The interactive "lab" exercises (starting in Chapter 2) help explain jQuery's capabilities and features quickly and conveniently, using your computer browser. This method of teaching is terrific; very intelligent, yet simple.
I started out by reading the Appendix: "Javascript that you need to know but might not!". This helped to fill in my understanding of Javascript and was a good way to ease into the book. I am not a Javascript expert but I am a seasoned programmer and I have read dozens upon dozens of technical books over the years, and I know a well developed technical guide when I see it.
Kudos to the authors and the publisher for a fine book about jQuery.

My brief research before the purchase of this book lead me to believe, that this is currently (July 2008) the best book on jQuery. After getting started with the book, I still think that's the case. Except if I consider online docs and tutorials as well. Online tutorials benefit jQuery from the fact that you can really try out and see what's happening. Sure you could download the code or type it down from the book, but the fact is that I ended up learning more about jQuery following interactive online tutorials than from reading the book.
Usually, I prefer reading a book on the couch instead of on a computer screen, but that's not how you learn jQuery. You have to try it. You have to play with it. And if you have to sit in front of your PC or Mac anyway, you might as well just follow an online tutorial.

I purchased this book as soon as it was available. I knew very little about JavaScript then and jQuery in Action does not assume that you know anything about it. The examples are very clear and the book is very carefully written without unnecessary words. But you get more. The authors lead you to show how to think, they designed the samples to advance from trivial to professional knowledge. Often, scanning through the example code, I found myself asking "why is it this way?" and immediately in the next paragraph, there was the answer. I am impressed with the quality of writing, I think every serious professional should read this book whether or not he/she plans to use jQuery.

jQuery in Action is a practical book that explains how to use, and what's behind the magical framework known as jQuery. It's teaches by example, so you're never reading 20 pages of theory. The writing is clear and it really shows you how to get through some of the "gotchas" of javascript, like timing, animations, and our good friend Ajax. Good for beginners to Javascript, jQuery, and experts.

This is just an excellent book all around. It's well-written. No BS to wade through (just the stuff you need to get going with jQuery). It has excellent online tools to download so you can really get into jQuery and how it works (they call it a Lab page -- it's a set of HTML pages that you download and use to test tasks or theories in jQuery).

I haven't read too many books solely on Ajax frameworks but I cannot recommend this one enough. You'll be up and running with jQuery faster than you can imagine.

I have solid JavaScript skills and plenty of experience, but at first I wasn't feeling 100% comfortable using jQuery; I was able to be productive very quickly, but failed to feel at home using it. This book was exactly what I was looking for. jQuery has its own way to approach many problems and, in my case, I almost had to "unlearn" certain habits and embrace the idiomatic alternatives offered by the library. jQuery in Action helped me a lot in the process, saved me some time and made the whole learning process much more enjoyable. I wish there was more space dedicated to ui.jQuery, but I understand that's a topic worth a dedicated book.

I am not a big fan of JavaScript. This book is pretty much perfect for programmers that need to use JavaScript but have not weathered in the trenches with the language. If you have weathered in the trenches, I suspect this book will make your programming that much more productive and enjoyable. The book states on the back cover that you should have some experience with JavaScript and Ajax. True - but I have found that reading through this book actually clarifies many aspects of JavaScript and Ajax via the presentation of the framework. Depends on the reader but I would expect that if you are familiar with another language like Python, have a handy JavaScript reference at hand, and understand the basic concepts of Ajax, then you are good to go. The book is a pleasure to read and the technology is very worthwhile to learn.

Covers all the major elements to understanding the power behind JQuery. Makes Javascript much easier to tolerate.

This book provided me the needed information to be able to use JQuery practically and efficiently.

I have committed myself to using jquery exclusively for my javascript applications but not much is written about it so it is difficult to solve problems. This book answered a lot of my questions and cleared up many difficulties. I use it as a reference whenever I am stuck. Thank you for writing it.

This is a really nice book on jquery. I've been using jQuery on a few projects, but this really helped point me to several things I could be doing better. All too often you find yourself following a tutorial blindly, without full understanding. This book set a few of my "tutorial assumptions" straight.

I only wish it had a little more meat to it. I think it's just a matter of a few things I'd hoped to find not being there though. Definitely suggest this book if you're serious about messing with jQuery in a real project.

reading this book will assist you when working with jquery. it is very well written. short and to the point. worth buying

I really have tattered the edges of this book. Normally, I would read a technical book like this, extract all of the information I needed, and then set it back on the book shelf. Not with jQuery in Action! I bring it to work, and then I take it back home in the evening. It is an outstanding book for any programmer who is really serious about keeping all of the user events at the browser level; instead of always going back to the server for something. This book has raised my level of awareness of all of the DOM-level programming available with the use of simple jQuery scripting. Thanks Bear and Yehuda for all of your hard work. Please keep on writing and authoring!!

jQuery is a fantastic JavaScript framework - not unlike Ruby on Rails, it has brought back the fun into building rich web applications. Whether you are a novice (like myself), or a seasoned JavaScript veteran, you'll find the level of detail just right, which in itself is a great sign of a well structured framework.

Yehuda Katz and Bear Bibeault focus on jQuery core and walk the reader through all the basics of working with selectors, manipulating the DOM, working with JavaScript events, simple AJAX with jQuery, as well as, making use of external plugins. By the end, I felt very comfortable with jQuery - I understood the internals and framework decisions, and had enough breadth to start developing a non-trivial web application. Interactive examples sprinkled throughout the book were very helpful.

Highly recommended read if you're looking for a structured introduction to jQuery core.

My introduction to jQuery was working on a web application for a few months a year ago. I learned enough to get along by reading online documentation. Despite that previous experience, however, I learned quite a bit from jQuery in Action.

I found the book's level-of-detail to be just right. The authors neither gloss over important details nor do they belabor the obvious. The book is not an introduction to JavaScript or AJAX, but neither does it assume previous experience with jQuery. One area that did receive extra attention, because it needs it, was the differing event models in Internet Explorer vs. other browsers. I appreciated the fact that jQuery in Action spends half of one chapter explaining these important differences, before moving on to a description of jQuery's event handling mechanism.

I rarely write reviews for the books I read, but with this one a review isn't that hard. First and foremost, this book assumes that you already have some solid knowledge on web design (CSS, HTML, and Javascript). There is a quick chapter on javascript in the appendix that helps but it's more of a friendly reminder of javascript concepts that anything else. It's also good to have an understanding of some of the more advanced CSS selectors that are in the CSS3 specification. This isn't a requirement but you'll get a bit more out of it if you do. jQuery has some very powerful ways of selecting elements and you can use some of the CSS3 selector statements even if the browser doesn't support it. Very cool stuff! The authors do a great job of explaining things with detailed code and real-world examples (which you can download and run yourself if you wish to follow along). They also do a good job of breaking everything down into a linear fashion that is easy to absorb and don't get ahead of themselves all that often. All in all, this is probably one of the best web development/design related books I've read in a while. I haven't quite finished yet but the half I have read is reqlly well written. I already feel like I have a firm grasp of the basic concepts of jQuery and could probably start using it a bit. Bravo to the authors for writing a solid book on jQuery!

I found this book to be a great resource for learning about jQuery. I was able to apply what I learned right away.

Good book on jquery. I bought the book to learn jquery and it provide all I needed to port a PHP web based application of .NET using jquery and some of the plug-in to create a professional web site for a major health entity.

jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz is an excellent book for learning the jQuery JavaScript library. In my opinion the book is suitable for beginners as well as advanced developers that like to explore jQuery. It is also a good reference book as it describes all the essential functionality offered by jQuery in a nicely structured manner.

I belong to the category of developers that used Prototype in the past. The funny thing is though that both libraries offer almost identical sets of functionality. You may ask why did I decide to go with jQuery?

I like its innovative way of querying for page elements and to iterated over them, allowing you to often accomplish multiple tasks with just one line of code. jQuery in Action starts out explaining those core concepts of jQuery in the first 3 chapters of the book - allowing to query for page elements using the CSS syntax, how to manipulate page elements as well as how to work with collections of elements. The book does a very good job explaining those aspects of jQuery combined with many useful examples.

What also drove me to jQuery was the fact that it has a plug-in mechanism that allows you to either use additional third party add-ons or to write your own plug-ins by still adhering to the spirit of jQuery.

In that regard it is also worth mentioning that the jQuery website is "really nice" with a ton of documentation and also providing a plugin-repository, something Prototype is lacking. Thus, for the majority of your JavaScript needs, there is now a one-stop place to get it all.

Unfortunately, the authors do not provide a comparison between both wildly popular javascript libraries Prototype and jQuery even though Bear Bibeault has been a coauthor of Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action. It would have been nice if chapter '1.1 Why jQuery' detailed some pros and cons in that respect.

Generally, throughout the book, the authors encourage certain valuable patterns you should follow to write good unobtrusive JavaScript code using jQuery. I particularly liked that aspect of the book as it shows you efficiently how to separate page markup from JavaScript code.

In that regard it would have been nice, though, if the authors had mentioned YSlow as another tool to analyze your page markup, which includes the recommendation to place JavaScript at the bottom of your page rather then on the top, if possible.

Anyway, there shouldn't be any need to declared the onclick attributed on page elements directly any longer. It all can be separated using JavaScript events which is well described in the book.

Speaking of handling JavaScript events, I think the authors should have further mentioned the concept of event delegation. Instead, they describe how to use the Live Query plugin in order to solve a similar issue. After reading the respective chapter, I was going to further dive into Live Query but a fellow blogger pointed out NOT to use Live Query as "it is very performance heavy" but rather to use event delegation.

I guess this is a drawback writing a book about a subject that is evolving with the speed of light.

Nevertheless, despite all my critical remarks, I think that jQuery in Action is an excellent book that will help you learn and understand jQuery. I certainly enjoyed reading the book.

This book is a great introduction to jQuery... for someone such as myself who had only a rudimentary grasp of javascript this book was a real eye opener. The depth to which 'jQuery in Action' goes in describing how even the freshest web developer can begin extending the capabilities of jQuery, writing plugins and creating well crafted and sensible script, is well worth the time taken to read the book. The writing won't put you to sleep and the sample scripts are extremely helpful... Now if only they had a book about jQuery, PHP, and Ajax...