For my second book review I have chosen to review a book titled JQuery UI 1.7 published by PackT Publishing about jQuery UI. As you may be aware I love to write my own jQuery plugins but I have barely scraped on the surface when it comes to using jQuery UI.
My prior knowledge of jQuery UI focuses on using it for accordions which jQuery UI is abit overkill for as you can write your own accordion in less than 10 lines of code. My focus therefore when reading this book is to learn what else I can get out of using JQuery UI for my projects to save me time and make my site easier to use for my users.
When first picking up the book I looked through the contents page and I saw that the book is clearly broken up into sections detailing each feature of jQuery UI. This is great for people who do not have time to read a entire book and would rather just use it as a reference tool and be able to go straight to a section they need.
I started with reading the introduction and it showed me the high quality of the authors writing, he explains the JQuery UI file structure very well. He does mention using a CDN to host your jQuery and jQuery UI javascript files but doesn’t provide the link to the CDN which would have been useful. Overall the first chapter is a good start for the book and gets your ready to get your hands dirty.
Moving on to the rest of the book, as previously mentioned the book is laid out into sections for each key feature of jQuery UI. This is great for dipping in and out of the book when you need it however if you are still relatively new to jQuery going through the book and doing all the examples may help you to develop your knowledge of jQuery.
When reading a book like this it’s important to compare it against the closest similar resource available, which for jQuery UI is the JQuery UI demo library.. I believe its in this comparison that the book really shines, when navigating the demo library there are lots of tabs to switch through and options to expand to find what you want, with the book there are lists of all the different options and then detailed walkthroughs on how to use them. I found the book much quicker at helping me find the answers to questions I had when coding and it really was a time saver.
The main issue I found with the version of the book I was using (ePub version) is that the code examples were all in blue (colour for different types of tags like a IDE has would have been nice). Related to this the code samples also lack indentation which would have made it easier to read. Other than that he book was very easy to read and is a great reference tool, it’s now got a permanent home on my iPad for whenever I need it.
So now for the scoring
Value for money – 6/10 – although the ebook is fairly cheap there are many free resources on the web which are adequate for most people, I think if this book was priced at £4.99 mark it would be a must have due to it being a quicker reference than these online resource and as the saying goes, time is money. While I don’t want to undervalue the writers work info however feel at price elasticity of demand rules apply here and the lower price would increase sales.
Ease of understanding – 8/10
Level of prior knowledge required – intermediate. – this book works great as a jQuery UI reference but you need to have a solid foundation in understanding how to use jQuery
This book is available direct from the publishers.
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