Blue Anvil Journal » Blog Archive » Book Review

JQuery is a great open-source javascript framework, with a great manual. The “jQuery Reference Guide” builds on that, and is a great companion to the previously reviewed “Learning jQuery” book.

The “jQuery Reference Guide” contains thorough explanation of the jQuery framework’s functionality and features, and is great to use as quick reference when developing scripts with jQuery.

Book Information

Full Title:: jQuery Reference Guide: A Comprehensive Exploration of the Popular JavaScript Library
Author(s):: Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg
Pages:: 268
Published:: August 2007
Publisher:: Packt Publishing
ISBN:: 978-1847193810

My Review

A good reference book needs a good structure and an even better index; the jQuery reference guide has just that.

The book is aimed developers with a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, and an understanding of the syntax of JavaScript; no jQuery experience is needed or assumed, however I feel a little understanding of jQuery is useful to get you started, even though the introduction covers the basics. The book is particularly useful for forgetful developers like me, for quickly looking up functions.

Each section of the book is clearly labelled and well organized just like the jQuery online documentation, however, the book goes into much more detail than the online manual, and is much more useful if you have never used a particular function before since it explains and expands on usage scenarios.

The index is great; first, an alphabetical list of functions is extremely useful when you need to look up something fast, then a list of everything else in the book. This book makes it so much easier to find what you need than the website; the website has no obvious list of all functions, and the search often fails to find certain functions such as “each()”.

The book covers the online API documentation, and is divided into the following sections:

Anatomy of a jQuery Script - This learns you the ropes of using jQuery in websites.
Selector Expressions - This section lists and explains functions for selecting elements in a web page; all jQuery developers should learn this!
DOM Traversal Methods - This section shows the functions used to search through the DOM to get what you need.
DOM Manipulation Methods - This section explains the functions to manipulate the DOM however you want.
Event Methods - Event triggers are covered here, so you can add client-side interactivity to your site
Effect Methods - Effects, animations, its all in this section.
AJAX Methods - This section covers AJAX functions, used to communicate with the server dynamically.
Miscellaneous Methods - This section covers everything else, such as getting the users browser version, manipulating multiple elements with the each() method and so on.

The book also goes on to tell you how to create plugins, and explains two useful downloadable plugins:

Dimensions Plugin - For getting dimensions, sizes, and positions of elements.
Form Plugin - For dealing with forms, and utilizing AJAX technology

Like “Learning jQuery“, the language used in the book is clear and easy to understand, its quite well formatted also as an added bonus. The few screen shots there are, aren’t too great, so its a good idea to check out the accomplying website for more examples on the tutorials in the book.

I love this book, the only thing that lets in down in my eyes is that a few functions are outdated with the new release of jQuery 1.2.1, this book was written for jQuery 1.1.2. However, this only effects a few functions and features, such as the XPath selectors which were dropped in the new version, so I’d still recommend it for reference.

In conclusion, if you use jQuery and you frequently find yourself looking at the online documentation when your stuck, get this book! It will help tremendously.

Verdict: 9/10 – Extremely useful, a must have for any jQuery developers bookshelf.