Smashing jQuery: Professional Techniques with Ajax and JQuery (Smashing Magazine Books) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Having recently completed one of Smashing Magazine's other titles, I had high hopes for this title.

While some of the information in the book is useful, it is a far cry from most of the other jQuery titles available and the section on the jQueryUI is practically non-existent. Aside from a brief explanation of the ThemeRoller, the examples of the UI widgets that are there merely tell you how to connect them with an element, with absolutely no explanation of their functionality.

Perhaps the worst thing about this title, however, is the sheer amount of errata the book has to offer. Nearly every other page has a mistake in syntax that quickly becomes confusing and leaves the reader spending more time sorting out the errors than they do actually reading the book. One example includes quotation marks in the syntax in one paragraph, which is suddenly missing in the next. Another, and perhaps the most ridiculous, are references in the jQuery code to class names that don't even exist in the mark-up.

To top this all off, there is absolutely no support on the book's website to report said errata. After all of this nonsense I tossed the book into the garage sale pile and moved on to greener pastures.

I'm completely new to jQuery and any javascript, and I think this book was meant for ppl like me.

I needed to use some javascript and couldn't find a resource that was working for me because online tutorials fell into two categories, either Kindergarten guides to creating a variable, or advanced techniques for creating plugins. I wanted, and needed, to start at the bottom, but without getting stuck in the basics. I found this book to be a great balance, and I've already used the info to implement the feature I **Needed**, so I'm moving on to stuff that is going to be even more fun.

Smashing jQuery offers an exploration of jQuery fundamentals, covering basic concepts like understanding the Document Object Model (DOM), selectors, ajax, plugin authoring and more.

The book is very much targeted at those who are new to jQuery (i.e haven't really used it before), but manages to go a step further than some of the other beginner titles by providing additional tips and best practice pointers before delving deeper into a topic..

For example, in one of the opening chapters, beginners are advised about the use of $.noConflict (for avoiding conflicts with other libraries) straight off the bat (which was good to see from a best practice perspective). I should also mention that Jake provides those coming from a pure JavaScript background some clear examples of where a library like jQuery can significantly decrease the time they spend coding solutions (which is ideal for setting up the stage for the rest of the book).

Early on, readers are introduced to essential tools such as Firebug for in-browser debugging and MAMP/WAMP/Apache in case a local development environment is desired for testing $.ajax() calls before they see any jQuery code. To many of us that have been using jQuery for years, these are very obvious but the book gets plus points for highlighting these early in case a beginner isn't aware of them.

Now, what I personally look for in a book on jQuery for beginners is a comprehensive explanation of core fundamental concepts such as:

1. How jQuery lets you `query' the DOM through selectors and the differences between class, ids and attribute/pseudo selectors.

2. What event delegation is and how .bind(), .live() and .delegate() can be used. What the difference between them is and where one may be better suited to a problem than another.

3. Basic concepts like how to use animation convenience methods such as .slideUp()/.slideDown() as well as the more important .animate()

4. A well-explained summary of $.ajax() including coverage of error handling, data types etc. (note that a number of new features were introduced to $.ajax() in jQuery 1.5, but these are likely not to appear in any published titles for another few months).

Smashing jQuery provides well written chapters on all of the above and I would add that the book also contains `cookbook' style examples throughout for anyone wishing to expand on what we provide over at [...]. This makes it ideal for those wishing to both learn and test out their new skills with practical tutorials.

One potential downside of this aspect of the book is that (unlike say, Code Lindley's jQuery Enlightenment book) Smashing jQuery doesn't contain links to online examples on JSBin or jsFiddle, something that I think may have made it easier to beginners to visualize.

This can be taken as a good or bad thing - re-writing out the examples yourself is probably a good exercise that can help familiarize yourself with the library (and it wouldn't take you more than a few minutes to do this) so weigh the knowledge provided with how important this might be to you.

Applying what you've learned & Plugin Authoring

As a beginner, if you're coming from a web design background, one of the first things you'll want to do once you've learned a little jQuery is see first-hand how it can be used to enhance your site. Jake's book has a comprehensive section dedicated to this and covers creating your own UI elements with jQuery such as accordians and tabbed content. (I would have liked to see a little more tie-in with jQuery UI here, but he mentions it in more detail in this next section).

As mentioned, Smashing jQuery also includes an entire section dedicated to writing plugins from a beginner's perspective. Learning how to encapsulate your code in a clean re-usable form (eg. plugin authoring) is very much a logical next step once you understand the basics behind how jQuery works so this was something I was quite pleased to see included.

Not all books that cover fundamentals include a guide on how to write your own plugins from scratch and I think Jake does a terrific job of both laying down the foundations of how to do this, but also guiding you through the process of converting your code into a plugin.

One of the last chapters in Jake's book is on jQuery Mobile. I had personally been expecting tutorials on how to use it rather than a high-level summary (what is provided), however given the publishing dates on Smashing jQuery, it's very possible that we hadn't released jqMobile in time for him to cover this adequately.

In my opinion, this shouldn't really matter as once you know enough to dive into jQuery Mobile, the official API and examples should be sufficient to help you get started.

All-in-all Smashing jQuery is quite a solid book and I'd recommend picking it up if you're new to jQuery and would like a good reference to help take your skills further.