Jquery Pocket Reference [Anglais] [Broché]

I've enjoyed previous books by David Flanagan and decided to read jQuery Pocket Reference. I thought I would quickly skim through the chapters because I considered myself fairly proficient in jQuery. After the first chapter and Flanagan's explanations of jQuery's method, object, and function ('a' versus 'the'), I decided to read more in-depth. I'm glad, because this is one of the best books I've read in O'Reilly's Pocket Reference library. I was surprised to have found a one which has a perfect balance between API, examples, and explanation.

For developers who want to learn jQuery, you will be able to learn nearly all you need to get started from this book. When I first heard about jQuery, I purchased a much larger book, which ended up being about 80% reprinting the API on jquery.com. If you're like me, and you prefer insight, hints, and gotchas which encourage you to write some code, then this book is perfect for you.

For developers familiar with jQuery, you may learn a little from this book. Flanagan covers a lot of overloads to common jQuery functions. Some of them, I never knew existed. The recent release of jQuery 1.5 has actually added more functionality than what is covered in this book.

The only thing I found a little odd about this book is how the jQuery Selectors chapter was at the end of the book. Considering jQuery is a framework for querying the DOM, using selectors, I would expect that content to be the first covered. On the other hand, as a reference, you may expect the most used content at the end of the book. Luckily, Flanagan knows what he's doing and tells you to review the Selectors chapter if you're rusty or unfamiliar.

This review pertains to the Kindle Edition.

First, had Amazon or the publisher indicated that this was included as a chapter in Flanagan's recently published JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages, I wouldn't have bought it--but I downloaded both at the same time and didn't find out until a couple days later. That's why I gave the book a 4-start rating rather than 5. If you are a DTB user then it makes sense to have both because you're unlikely to want to carry around an 1100 page volume as a quick reference, but for a Kindle user with full text search available buying this is a waste of money if you are going to buy the other. That, in fact is my recommendation: buy the larger book and park it on your development workstation.

That said, this is a fine piece of work. Like many developers, I started using a JavaScript library for a particular project and settled on jQuery because it provided the features I needed at the time. I came to understand its value and used in increasingly, but always with a familiarity constrained by the requirements of my initial use. My skills grew as I used it, but slowly.

So, I really welcomed and valued the first 2/3 (or so) of Flanagan's book (or chapter), which is a narrative description of the library's features, with examples and detailed explanations of what's going on behind the scenes. Writing that sort of narrative about a programming language is hard, and Flanagan's only peer for that, in my opinion, is Friedl of Mastering Regular Expressions (also an O'Reilly book), and he succeeded here well enough that a person can actually read the whole thing with considerable understanding, thereby gaining a better overview of the library than can be had by searching out features when we bump up against something we don't know how to do. The last 1/3 of the book is a reference section: concise, simple, and well-organized, just what you need when you forget a particular syntax.

The book was carefully adapted to electronic viewing. Code is displayed in a fixed space font to differentiate it from the surrounding text, but the font has the same height and color as the text and so is easy to read. Sidebars are presented with a slightly smaller, but still easily readable font, as a distinct block of text embedded with the main text. This, and the larger work from which it was extracted, are the best examples of technical books adapted to e-readers I have seen, so O'Reilly deserves considerable credit for their success in this format.

The book was written for jQuery version 1.4 and the current version is 1.6.1 (as of today), and quite a bit has been added to jQuery. I knew that before I bought the book and decided the reference retained enough value to be worthwhile even though the version had been superseded. You should bear that in mind, though.

I go for long periods without writing javascript/jquery (mostly working on database/backend development), so I get rusty. I find this little "pocket reference" really fits the bill to help me get my mind back into jQuery tactics and syntax.

I was quite pleasantly surprised to find so much information so well organized in such a small format (little space is wasted on unnecessary white space). The clarity lives up to the the high reputation that Flanagan has established in his comprehensive javascript volumes.

Thanks: It's great to have this jewel to pack with me when on the road (as well as on desktop).