Murach’s jQuery, 2nd Edition by Zak Ruvalcaba & Anne Boehm

I give this book 8 out of 10 horseshoes.

The book follows the Murach style - on the left pages there is text, on the right pages there are screen shots, code snippets, and short summaries of the text on the left. For experienced programmers it's tempting to skip the entire left pages and focus on the right pages only.

I've read Murach's JavaScript book just before this one, and the first chapter is nearly identical. That feels a bit lazy to me. If you've read the JavaScript book you can completely skip the first section (4 chapters), since the rest is sort of a recap.

Apart from the copy-pasting from the JavaScript book, I think the book is quite good. It explains the jQuery API quite well, including form validation, jQuery UI, and even some plugins. Sometimes the book directs you to the documentation of specific plugins, but given the sheer number of options these have and the fact that the basics are still explained, I can live with that. I also liked the jQuery Mobile section, since I wasn't even aware something like that existed.

I do have a few issues with the book. It contains a few chapters on subjects that have little to nothing to do with jQuery. Using the Google Maps API, Geolocation and Web Workers would feel more in place in the JavaScript book, which doesn't include these subjects at all. A second issue is something that really annoyed me, and that was (regarding new HTML5 APIs) the literal phrase "Another way to find informaton about an API is to search the Internet." People get programmer books to learn, not to be told to use Google, Bing, etc.

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Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher for reviewing it on behalf of CodeRanch.

I give this book 8 out of 10 horseshoes.

"Murach's jQuery" assumes you know nothing about HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It starts from the beginning. The first section of the book covers the JavaScript you need to know in order to use jQuery including the DOM. I like that the book showed how to debug/troubleshoot a web app. There was good coverage of the APIs including mobile and HTML 5 web storage. I like the highlighting in longer code examples to see what is important. I learned about JavaScript strict mode and look forward to trying that in a real application.

So why did I only give the book four stars? I had a few issues that got in my way of reading. The book started using $ syntax in non-jQuery JavaScript before defining it. I also thought it was odd that creating a plugin is covered before forms given that forms are common.

I don't think the book was bad, but it's not my favorite Murach book or my favorite book on jQuery.

Review migrated from old book review post

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Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher for reviewing it on behalf of CodeRanch.