jQuery in Action [Anglais] [Broché]

These comments (and the star rating) are very specifically from the point of view of someone who wants to add some interactivity and AJAX to web pages using the most straightforward efficient method, which is with JQuery.

THE GOOD: These guys absolutely know JQuery and JavaScript. They are fluent experts and authorities. They know the minute details and the inner guts. Also, they put a great deal of effort into this book. They built some good downloadable learning tools for the early sections and thought about the organization of the material.

THE BAD: Too few examples. Often complex commands are introduced without even an example to illustrate the syntax.
(FOR EXAMPLE, early on when selectors are discussed, they introduce a selector that requires quotes. That selector itself must be contained in quotes. They never show how the quotes within quotes syntax is handled).

The examples that are included are often not simple or straightforward. To illustrate AJAX their example gratuitously includes a custom plugin. I'd much rather have more examples of variations of the AJAX calls in the AJAX section instead of one long clunky example that illustrates only limited cases of the various jQuery Ajax methods. In several cases, The most complex JQuery method with more than a dozen possible parameters is simply listed with the parameters barely explained with no examples at all. Maybe if I was a professional JavaScript programmer a lot of the left out stuff would be trivial or obvious. But it wasn't for me.

In other places there is a surfeit of unnecessary technical material. The chapter on events, for example, starts off with long sections on the DOM event model and cross browser issues without a HINT that those issues aren't material to the JQuery user (that's the point! JQuery handles that stuff so I don't need to know).

Stylistically, these guys seem to be inspired either by ad copy (there is a ridiculous excess of exclamations!) or by programming blogs. They have the a fondness for jargon and dogma that seems to be the morass of the self-educated technophile. Many pages are wasted with examples of How HORRIBLE it was in the days before jQuery. In some sections (like the beginning of the AJAX section) they elaborate on the complexities of browser differences for AJAX calls. One of the most complicated sections in the book, only to show that you really don't need to know any of that stuff thanks to The Miracle of jQuery! (!))

INTERNET EXPLORER: As far as these guys are concerned, Internet Explorer is a bastard stepchild marginal fringe case. They seem embarrassed and appalled that they have to mention it within their pristine pages. OK. They don't like it. But more than half the browsers out there are IE and IE 8 continues to have its own quirks and not follow standards. DEAL WITH IT. JQuery itself has very much code dedicated to sorting out IE issues. It would be nice if the authors would hit that issue head on. A simple list of the various things you can do with JQuery that fix previous browser difficulties that required different code (CSS properties or JavaScript DOM issues) would be nice. Dealing with Internet Explorer hassles (and cross browser hassles in general) is one of the great gifts of JQuery.
Marginalizing that gift because of a distaste for the major browser (like it or not) just is not helpful. I'm not saying they deny the existence of IE. They just don't make it a focus at any point.

FIREBUG: The authors wait till quite late in the book and then treat it as a sort of aside. Firebug is THE javascript debugger for Firefox. The authors (in their brief aside) acknowledge that no one should be writing anything in JavaScript (and so, in jQuery) without using a debugger. Firebug is a fantastic learning tool for jQuery and makes the downloadable "lab" pages the authors provide more or less unnecessary. Since the authors clearly use Firebug themselves and acknowledge how useful and important it is, why do they barely give it a mention? I bet they used it when they were learning jQuery.

I don't like giving a book like this which clearly shows the earmarks of expertise and hard work a negative review. It may be the best JQuery book out there (I haven't read any others yet), but this book seriously needs some editing. Either that or I am simply the wrong audience. I do believe a professional JavaScript programmer would get more out of this than I did.
But in any event, the book should decide if it wants to be a reference, a tutorial, or both. I just think it's not a great introduction to a great subject. And I know it's a lousy reference, because I tried to go back to some chapters to look up syntax. Hard to find. Hard to read. And few examples.

Here's why I gave this book a 5-star rating

1. I was new to JQuery, and they did a fantastic job of explaining it in very simple terms, without muddling it with unwanted details (like you try to pick up a new technology and wham! - you're hit with a dozen other related technologies that you don't care about right now)
2. Each chapter builds on the previous one.
3. When you get to Events, they've done a fantastic job of explaining the inner workings of JavaScript in the appendix. This makes understanding JQuery events a lot easier.
4. The examples are great. Where possible, the authors talk about real world situations.

One thing I'd improve on

1. Some topics are discussed too much in detail. For a beginner wanting to get his/her hands dirty with code, there's way too much covered. This is good if someone wants to build a rich client interface application, but an overkill when a majority of us are looking to enhance our website and cut down on javascript code. But again, there's not one book that can satisfy everyone, and I'll take the extra details anytime, than a poorly written book.

My advice: If you are a novice with JQuery, but this book.

I've been using JavaScript for years, and have worked with other JavaScript libraries, but needed to learn jQuery. After reading this book, I found jQuery intuitive, and easy to work with. I can't advise how it would work for someone less comfortable with JavaScript.

The second thing to rate about a book is whether it sits on the shelf after you have read it, or whether it is still useful. While not organized as a reference, I find myself frequently going back to the book. I can usually find what I am looking for in seconds, and it is often more helpful than the jQuery website.