Learning jQuery and Getting Better at Javascript

over the last couple of years I’ve seen jquery grow leaps and bounds. And every time I look at some jquery code I feel there is something I am missing which I need to learn. I’ve given their documentation a try, and it seems to be ok for basic stuff.

Can you guys suggest a good jquery book that might help? I’m looking for something that doesnt go much in depth into the theory part of jquery but actually does and shows examples of how to do all the cool stuff.

Back in the days when I was in school, I never cared for JS, CSS, HTML …but now that after 3 years after school I see myself doing a lot of server side web development. I want to learn these technologies.

22 thoughts on “Learning jQuery and Getting Better at Javascript

  1. user

    I'm in the same boat. I did some web dev stuff over the years, mostly fairly static stuff. I occasionally had to hack together some JS and never really liked it, but looking at jQuery it looks pretty cool and that seems to be the way things are moving these days, so I figure I might as well dustbin that whole "eew JavaScript" mindset and brush up on that stuff. +1

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  2. user

    I think you would be better at learning javascript first and from there you can learn its libraries like jQuery. Book I would recommend would be JQuery in Action, its the best IMO and recently I found a link that makes the first chapter free online just to give you a little taste. Trust me worth the buy

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  3. user

    I think you’d be best off by learning JavaScript first. Learning a library without the background knowledge is going to leave you high and dry at the worst possible times.

    Besides, you’ll appreciate jQuery that much more when you realize you can accomplish in 1 line what used to take 50. 🙂

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  4. user

    I started using jQuery in a project and was learning from jquery website and my colleagues. After reading jQuery in Action I’ve learned many things that I was missing. I really enjoyed reading this book. And still is a very good reference. Jquery in Action also introduces to some jquery’s plugin.

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  5. user

    These books are all (co) authored by John Resig who also wrote jQuery itself.

    For JS in general, I’ve also heard very good things about this:
    JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford who works for Yahoo!.

    Crockford and Resig both have free and comprehensive videos at the YUI theater. These three are good for a broad overview of general JS:

    • Douglas Crockford — The JavaScript Programming Language
    • Douglas Crockford — Advanced JavaScript
    • Douglas Crockford — An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the DOM
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  6. user

    A great start point is the its online documentation.

    JQuery gives you a great chance to “Write Less, Do More”. But javascript is not quite comfortable to write and to debug. I do not think it makes much sense to dive into javascript. I suggest you as take a look at GWT. You can write code in java, which will be generated to valid javascript automatically.

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  7. user

    Another good book (along with “jQuery in Action”) is “Learning JQuery 1.3“, the updated version of (I think) the very first jQuery book.

    From the Amazon product description: “Basic JavaScript programming knowledge is required. You will need to know the basics of HTML and CSS, and should be comfortable with the syntax of JavaScript”.

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