jQuery isn’t short of documentation. The main jQuery website provides a wealth of useful information. Resources such as jQAPI can help locate specific methods. If that’s not enough, you can browse the jQuery source code. All these resources are great, but they are aimed at reasonably competent developers who want to locate documentation about a specific function. What about novice developers who are new to jQuery or the JavaScript language?
I’d be failing in my duties if I neglected to mention SitePoint’s books such as the magnificent jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earle Castledine and Craig Sharkie. However, while you’re waiting for it to be delivered, I can recommend jQuery Fundamentals by Rebecca Murphey. It’s a comprehensive online book which guides you from JavaScript basics through to writing jQuery plugins. Even expert JavaScript developers will find something they didn’t know.
The book is excellent. It’s well-written, concise, and contains plenty of examples and JavaScript gotchas. What’s more, it’s free.
The sections include:
- JavaScript basics
- jQuery basics
- utility methods
- events and effects
- Ajax
- writing jQuery plugins
There’s also a list of links to all the examples. That’s useful when you forget the exact syntax for anonymous self-executing functions or cloning DOM nodes.
If you’ve been intending to learn JavaScript and jQuery, stop procrastinating, head over to jQuery Fundamentals and write a grovelling thank you tweet to Rebecca!
What’s your favorite JavaScript or jQuery resource?
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
