Rob Hawkes

I really don't like the way this text forces the use of the JQuery library. The author tells you that he'll "show you both ways" but, when it actually comes to writing the code, he too often does it using JQuery alone.

There are some instances where JQuery is, I'd say, indisputably preferable — notably, for using the "Dean Edwards script" rather than the antiquated window.onload function. But in too many other cases, the use of JQuery is just a shorthand to produce slightly more compact code, and in those instances, I believe that this author should have presented the reader with both options, pure JavaScript and JQuery, to allow the reader to choose which form to use.

For myself, I strongly prefer pure JavaScript whenever its use isn't unduly cumbersome. JQuery is just one of many libraries, albeit the most popular, and I believe that using pure JavaScript facilitates code maintenance by other users who may not be entirely up on JQuery. This author should have given his readers this option, which in too many cases he does not.

If I were rating this book from my own personal preference, I'd probably give it a half-star, but there may be readers who would go the other way and rank it quite highly. It's not at all a bad book if you like the author's emphasis on JQuery, so I'm not going to rate the book at all so that my own personal preference doesn't unfairly prejudice the star-rating.… (more)