Review of Learning jQuery 1.3

Eddie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:13:32 +0000

There were many things to like about this book Learning jQuery 1.3 by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg. The stand-out positive in my mind is the wealth of topics covered. Both simple and difficult concepts are included, and both are handled with ease. Good coding habits are repeatedly mentioned throughout. Subjects like progressive enhancement are encouraged, and pitfalls like memory leaks are warned against. Many real-world examples are included, as well as the full source code.

Learning jQuery 1.3 has a writing style that is very dry for a book written in a semi-conversational voice. I prefer a writing style with a little more personality to it, but acknowledge that’s not for everyone.

I did have two small complaints. First, I like to see the API list out at the top of the chapters. Appendix D contains a complete reference, but I like having a list of methods to be covered at the beginning of the chapter. While I’m at it, I may mention that the “complete” reference is little more than a cheetsheet style list. Perhaps a little more would have been useful.

My second complaint is about the poor code syntax highlighting. Just for record, this has nothing to do with the content, it’s just a complaint against the publisher. Take page 145, where three-quarters of the page is example code, but contains only bold line at the top showing the emphasized line. First, the bold often wasn’t enough to draw the eye… especially at the beginning of the book when a novice reader has to mentally separate standard JavaScript from jQuery code. Second, I understand that the example code is included, but couldn’t it have simply been excerpted here? I don’t understand wasting an entire page, when much less would do.

Based on the overall quality of the book, I recommend it for jQuery beginners.

Update to some random thoughts

Eddie — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:19:16 +0000

1) I took a look at the book on Processing, and it does look quite nice. That being said, I’m not quite sure what I’d use it for. So it fell a bit on my list.

2) Letterman is still pretty much the same. I haven’t seen Leno. Jon Stewart, however, looked TOTALLY crazy last night. It was really quite scary.

3) Rob Coburn, you had better hang out with Raluca and I pretty darned soon….

4) Despite ordering the Python in a Nutshell book, I have semi-officially decided to put off learning Python for a bit. I think that I am going to re-focus my attentions on Scheme, and work my way through the Little Schemer, The Scheme Programming Language, and SICP. I’ve been through some of them, but haven’t gotten to the end of any of them.

5) The Giants won! Beat the Bucs, and are going to play the Cowboys next week. I hate the Cowboys, so this is going to be a big deal. I’ll probably try to watch it.

6) Steve, congrats on the potential new-old gig!

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Review of Learning jQuery 1.3

Update to some random thoughts