Over the past month I have been reading jQuery Enlightenment by Cody Lindley. Let me say now, that if you use jQuery or are thinking about using jQuery then you should most certainly buy this book. It’s a quick read (122 pages) that includes colorized code samples, easy to follow examples and solid explanations.
Author Cody Lindley is a member of the jQuery team and explains why he wrote the book.
jQuery Enlightenment was written to express, in short-order, the concepts essential to intermediate and advanced jQuery development. Its purpose is to instill in you, the reader, practices that jQuery developers take as common knowledge. Each chapter contains concepts essential to becoming a seasoned jQuery developer.
This book is intended for three types of readers. The first is someone who has read introductory books on jQuery and is looking for the next logical step. The second type of reader is a JavaScript developer, already versed in another library, now trying to quickly learn jQuery. The third reader is myself, the author. I crafted this book to be used as my own personal reference point for jQuery concepts. This is exactly the type of book I wish every JavaScript library had available.
I would argue that this book is perfectly suitable for beginners too. It’s simply a must have jQuery book. It’s the only one you need; it will take you from beginner to competent user.
I do ASP.NET / C# web development where I build web-based software for school districts. My preferred architecture is one in which I use NO server-controls. That means no GridViews, no Repeaters, no ListViews. If fact, nothing that uses runat server will be found on the page. The page will only consist of XHTML. So there is no need for a viewstate either. We end up using jQuery a lot in this architecture. We use jQuery / Ajax to call Web services that then query the database using LINQ to SQL and pass our data back to the client where we can then populate our XHTML controls. It works great and is extremely fast and efficient. The code couldn’t be cleaner. In addition, this methodology would allow you to easily change to a PHP or Java backend and you wouldn’t have to change a single thing on the frontend. I will give a full example on this methodology another time, but the point is – you need to learn jQuery.
For more information on the jQuery Enlightenment book, including a breakdown of each chapter go here. I would recommend buying the full color book from lulu.com as it’s well designed and very handy to have on your desk.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Not using any serverside ASP.NET controls is interesting. Did you implement in Javascript/jQuery all the multiple pages, next/prev and other stuff that those controls do?
January 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am
@Brian, yep, paging, sorting and all the rest. Keep in mind, when you use server controls they are just writing the JavaScript for you. So you just have to do it yourself. But jQuery’s code is a lot smaller and faster and it’s just not that hard to do. I will give a working example in the following month.
Also of note is that Microsoft is actually using jQuery in their MVC framework.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:54 am
Also worth noting is that Telerik uses jQuery too. Just in case you use Telerik controls? So if you know what you are doing you don’t need Telerik.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:56 am
did anyone bought that book ?? couse i m interested.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:39 am
Thanks for this useful post.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:39 am
I Have readed more opinions in the web and i think i will go to the schoop for this book and order it ;D
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:55 pm
thanks for your article. i always learn from cssplay, sometime i learn from the book learning jquery 1.3. now may be i get a more choice
August 11th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
This book would be useful for the study of jquery, sincere thanks for the writer’s sharing.
August 24th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
keep in mind,when you use server dontrols they are just writing the javascript for you.