jQuery Enlightenment, A Review

March 23, 2010 - 2 Comments

jQuery Enlightenment by Cody LindleyA few months ago Cody Lindley asked if I would review his new book, jQuery Enlightenment after he saw me tweet about it. I jumped at the chance, but due to many other projects, this review has seen many delays. My apologies to Cody and to you for not posting this review sooner. That said, I’m very happy to share my thoughts now that time permits and I think you’ll find it useful.

The Short Review

jQuery Enlightenment is great for anyone who has some experience with jQuery and wants to step up their game or is familiar with another JavaScript framework like Prototype or Dojo and wants to ramp up on the increasingly popular jQuery framework. The book is not for complete beginners, but if you have a foundation, you’ll be able to jump right in and learn.

At $15 for the PDF ebook, it’s a no-brainer. Buy a copy.

Two Quick Notes

First: when Cody released this book, jQuery was at 1.3.2. Between then and the time of this writing, jQuery 1.4 has been released. While there are some key differences introduced in 1.4, I don’t think they detract from Cody’s work.

Second: Cody gave me a copy of the book in return for this review. Luckily, I really like the book, so I feel confident in staking my reputation on the recommendation. I’m not receiving any form of affiliate payment for encouraging you to buy the book.

A Longer Review

So, obviously I like it. Here’s why.

It’s Accessible

Cody’s writing style is friendly and he has a knack for transforming complex concepts into understandable knowledge that you can quickly apply. He’s included a wealth of code, even better, he’s posted all the samples on JS Bin for easy access.

Additionally, as the file is a PDF, it is easy to take it with you on your phone, or using my favorite method – DropBox, which maintains the file across multiple machines. Keeping your copy open makes it easy to search for a particular event, effect or method while you’re working.

It Covers What You Need to Know

jQuery Enlightenment starts by explaining core jQuery concepts, quickly moving into more detailed and advanced topics. While I won’t reiterate everything (check out the table of contents on the site), I think it’s important to list some of the key concepts he does cover to show the breadth of the book:

  • Traversing the DOM
  • HTML manipulation, including a chapter on forms
  • Events and Effects
  • AJAX
  • Performance Best Practices
  • Writing a jQuery plugin

Yeah, Cody covers a lot in this book. While I’m by no means an expert, I’m comfortable with jQuery and I learned a lot. For example, I had somehow missed the existence of preventDefault() and stopPropogation(), so I’ve relied on return: false. This works most of the time, but now I know that there’s extra granularity available to me should I need it. Nice.

Oh and don’t miss the gems in Chapter 12 (Miscellaneous Concepts) as he’s thrown in some very useful knowledge there at the end.

Wrapping Up

So, as I noted at the beginning, I think this is a great book and an easy purchase decision if you are familiar with JavaScript and are interested in jQuery.

Grab a Copy and Tell Us What You Think

I’d love to hear your opinion on the book. Would you recommend it too? Let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, JavaScript Tagged With: ajax, book reviews, books, ebooks, JavaScript, jquery, reviews, Web Development

Inspirational Business Books

February 2, 2010 - 3 Comments

One of favorite benefits of Refresh Austin is the chance to learn from the wide array of members and their experiences. Occasionally someone posts a question or suggestion that pulls together many different experiences and ideas as the thread grows. This post is basically a straight up rip-off of one of those threads, but it’s stolen out of love. I hate to see great information and suggestions lost amongst the mailing list – a flare of light that fades into the shadows.

Jan Triplett originally posted this to the group: “I would like to know what business books inspire you – new or old. I would also like to know why you singled them out.” Even better, she kicked it off with three recommendations of her own (Small Is Beautiful, Neanderthals at Work, Big-Box Swindle), which she has also blogged on her site in the post 3 Older Business Books That Inspire, providing a great write-up of each.

Many of my picks match those of other Refreshers who responded, but I’ll include a couple unique suggestions at the end of this post after you’ve had a chance to see all of the other recommendations. There were also several recommendations that are now in my list of books to read.

Norman Harman recommended Presentation Zen, which is one of my favorite books covering how to make the normally boring corporate PowerPoint presentation interesting. He noted that it may not qualify as a business book, but “it applies because so much of business is presenting and selling your project/ideas/product/etc to clients/customers/management/etc.” I’m in full agreement.

Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow was recommended by Marcus Irven.

Dimitri Lundquist, an Information Architect, recommended Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management, which he described as “a super pragmatic, and really smart, guide to software and web project management”, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, that teaches you to treat “negotiations not as a zero sum game but as a process of collaborative problem solving in order to arrive at a mutually satisfactory outcome” and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, which “presents a series of tools and exercises in problem solving and communication.” The latter is based on The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, which is currently in my stack of “to read “books on my nightstand. So now I have a follow-up.

Dan Brown included The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, which he said he was not “too fond of the author’s conversational style of writing, but he does a wonderful job of identifying the traps most small-business owners get caught in and explaining how to get out of them.”

Holly Fortenberry pointed the group to Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big which she said is “about choosing not to grow your business beyond a certain point, the point at which you tend to lose your mojo.”

The Design of Everyday Things is easily one of the most recommended books, both on the list and in general among this crowd. Dan Brown noted that “this book will seriously mess up the way you look at things. Not only will you start to notice all the poorly designed objects around you, you’ll gain a deep appreciation for the effort it takes to really design something well.”

Lorin Rivers suggested Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, another one of my favorites as well. He noted it as being “inspiring in a similar way to Small Giants.”

In addition to the books above, I really like slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations as a companion to Presentation Zen for anyone who wants to be engaging instead of reading off of slides. I also recommend Crossing the Chasm and Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, which sadly appears to be out of print, though it is old enough to pre-date wide-adoption of the Web. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is great companion to Getting to Yes.

I hope this is useful and would love to hear your recommendations. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on these books and others you’d recommend.

Filed Under: Bookshelf Tagged With: books, business, entrepreneur, marketing, Reading

The Value of Free eBooks

January 13, 2010 - Leave a Comment

A year and a half ago, Tor a publisher of Fantasy and Sci-Fi released a selection of their books for free on PDF. Like so many others who love to read, I downloaded a significant number of them (at least 15). And they sat on my hard drive untouched as I didn’t have a great way to read them (computer screens aren’t ideal for late night reading).

Out of those 15 I was genuinely excited about a few, but most were by authors unknown to me or were books that I likely would have never bothered to look at (I’m not that interested in Fantasy) but I thought it worthwhile to snag them as the only investment on my part would be the time it takes to read a chapter before deciding whether the book was worth completing.

51PGEMXGN8L._SL160_.jpg Two months ago I was fortunate to receive a Kindle for my birthday, which quickly became a repository for the Tor PDFs. They were free from the shadows of my computer. With this new, convenient way to read them I decided to start with Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I devoured it. The book was enjoyable to read and the Kindle simply faded away into convenience. Half way through the book I was sidelined by a nasty cold, so I had plenty of time to finish the story and the first thing I did upon clicking through to the last screen was to buy Ghost Brigades, the next in the series, which was delivered straight to my device.

I did the same with the The Last Colony, the third in the series.

And I did this in a span of only a few days.

By providing free access to the first book, Tor profited from my purchase of two that I likely would not have picked up. And those two were in electronic format, which return a higher margin per item. Tor also recruited a new fan for one of their authors.

Tor wasn’t scared of the new format and they were willing to risk giving away a very real product. For their efforts, they have seen short-term benefits and will likely see long-term ones as well as I will likely pick up other works penned by Mr. Scalzi.

I hope to be as enthralled with some of the other free books I downloaded as I’ll be more than happy to give Tor more money for books by authors new to me.

Tor made it attractive and easy for me to give them money and I really wish other publishers would do the same.

Filed Under: Bookshelf Tagged With: books, ebooks, experience, kindle, retail

Where it Takes You

September 21, 2007 - Leave a Comment

So I want to take this opportunity to offer some liberating words to those of you who claim you don’t have the attention span or the time or the interest to finish a book: Fuck finishing. Start and see where that takes you.

Somewhere between “Once upon…” and “…ever after.” – Present Imperfect

The first two sentences in that post ring quite true. I’ve done that. On more than one occasion.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, General Tagged With: books, Reading

A Long Way Gone

July 11, 2007 - 5 Comments

A Long Way Gone by Ismael Beah at Amazon.com Growing up in the safe confines of the middle-class womb here in the U.S., it is easy to lose sight of the larger world around me. While I count myself a student of history and a constant consumer of information, I tend to focus on specific periods of the past (World War II, the Crusades, the founding of the United States etc.) or on specific realms of the present (the intricacies of the war in Iraq or the convoluted meanderings of those seeking the Presidency). So, having heard an amazing interview on NPR, I was excited to pick up the copy of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah that Sarah had read for her book club.

Reading the book feels like you are sitting across from a friend in a coffee shop, or over a pint, learning about a past that is both intriguing and scary. The informality of the telling pulled me in quickly and made the environment that much more real, as it remained very personal throughout. He didn’t pull back to the 50,000 foot view to tell you the maneuvers of each side, or the political gambits played by the government and the rebel forces. Instead, he told you how he ran from the rebels and soldiers alike, how he eventually became a soldier at the age of thirteen, how he returned to what was left of his childhood a few years later, only to be forced to escape to a new life far different than he could have ever expected.

It is hard to reconcile the giant grin on Ishmael’s face adorning the back cover, with the stories he tells. I grew fond of the boy who listend to early rap cassettes, practicing his dances for a talent show, and I could never quite come to terms with the thought that the same child became a killer many times over. His story cuts to the core of what it is to be human, dissecting the constant struggle to do what is “right” versus what needs to be done to survive. It’s also important to note how “right” can be defined in many different ways for the same situation. It may mean leniency and generosity, but it can just as easily mean vengeance against those who killed your family and took everything you had, including your sense of security and childhood.

I cannot recall any news reports or history books that could deliver this sense of day-to-day, on the ground reality, and I truly hope that school systems across the U.S. add Ishmael’s work to their reading list. It is important for us to look beyond our borders and the confines of our regular reality, keeping our eyes open to the fact that there are problems much larger than ours around the globe. What we do about them is another question – one which I am turning over in my head.

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Amazon), or if you have read it, please leave a comment as I would love to hear your thoughts.

Filed Under: Bookshelf Tagged With: books, History, Reading

Design and Web Books

February 14, 2006 - Leave a Comment

While I don’t have much time to actively participate in the Designers in House List, to which I subscribe, I enjoy reading many of the threads. One recent thread from a while back, titled “Your favourite web design book” served as a reminder that I should update my list of Web and design-related book recommendations. It’s been quite a while. So, here is a brain dump of the tomes on my bookshelf and ones that should be. The list is by no means comprehensive – I would love to hear your recommendations!

Items without a rating indicates that I do not own the book, but believe it is worth attention due to recommendations from other Web-type folks, or that I hold the author in high respect due to their other work and contributions to our industry.

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Filed Under: Bookshelf, CSS, Design, Design & UI Tagged With: books, Design, web design

Color Index

November 23, 2004 - Leave a Comment

One of the greatest things about sharing a love of design with Sarah, is the fact that we share various books, sites and creative inspiration on a daily basis. She was kind enough to get me Color Index for my birthday, which provides 1100 color combinations with their RGB and CMYK values. I absolutely love the power that this book, alongside the Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color provide. I have come to discover color combinations that would never have occurred to me, yet prove to be exactly what I need for a specific project. It can be hard to move beyond favorite colors or combinations without some visual inspiration. A quick flip through the pages of this book solves that problem!

Filed Under: Bookshelf, Design, Design & UI

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color

November 23, 2004 - 1 Comment

Leatrice Eiseman has put together a beautiful guide to color usage that is useful to designers and non-designers alike. While it discusses color theory and the connotations of specific colors, I find its strength lies in the color combinations and the way they are categorized.

Many projects requires a solid color set, to convey a specific tone (subdued, traditional, unique…) – a daunting task while staring at a blank screen. Yet, easily solved by flipping through the book and choosing a few color sets for application within a layout.

For non-designers, this book is just as useful in other areas, including paint choices (why stick with boring wall colors?), and I would assume, fashion.

While this book has much in common with Color Index, I think of them as complimentary to each other, as opposed to redundant.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, Design, Design & UI

Dynamic HTML

November 14, 2004 - Leave a Comment

A great companion to the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook, Dynamic HTML from O’Reilly fills in a lot of the gaps, especially in the areas of the DOM and JavaScript. This book is ideal for developers who are already comfortable with HTML and style sheets. I would not recommend it as the main learning resource for someone new to development, as it serves more as a reference book than a tutorial. But that is fine, we all need dictionaries right? Right.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, CSS

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook

November 14, 2004 - Leave a Comment

This is one of the oldest books on my development bookshelf that is still useful. I picked up the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook in 1997 with the intent of learning the new fangled concept of Cascading Style Sheets and DHTML. While the subject was a bit overwhelming at first (there were a lot of differences between the implementation of CSS within Netscape 4 and IE 4), I was able to ramp up on the technology in short order, due in large part to all of the work Mr. Graham put into this book.

As I said at the top of this post, the HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook is still useful. While a lot of Web sites provide this information, and many other books (including some in my library) cover the same topic, I find myself returning to this one when I need a quick answer.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, CSS

My Development Bookshelf

November 14, 2004 - Leave a Comment

I have added a new section to the Web Development category titled Bookshelf, which is to hold reviews of the various books that I use in my day-to-day Web development and design projects. Hopefully my thoughts on the books will prove useful to others as they look for the right book(s) for a specific project, or to learn a particular technology. While I will do my best to provide some detail with each review, I must admit that I have a few books that sit on the shelf unread. For the most part, these unread volumes are review copies, often covering technologies that I just haven’t had the time to pick up. Such is life. I will update these sparse entries when I have had a chance to use the books.

I would also love to hear any recommendations for alternate, or companion books on the subjects covered by each. So, please post a comment, or send me your suggestions!

Filed Under: Bookshelf, Reading

Beginning PHP4

October 15, 2002 -

I just picked up this book today to help me with the address book project I’m doing for the Brightwells. It looks like it will prove quite helpful. And, if my 20 minute perusal of its contents at Borders is any indication it should fill in the gaps left by my other PHP book (A Programmer’s Introduction to PHP 4.0).

For some reason the Amazon information to the right is pulling the wrong book. The right one is here.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, PHP & MySQL

Eric Meyer on CSS

September 20, 2002 -

I consider myself pretty well-versed in the use of CSS, the browser issues associated with it and the ways around those issues. But every time I read something from Eric Meyer I learn something. He is a master.

Eric Meyer on CSS contains an amazing amount of knowledge explained through 13 projects. Though the work details some CSS which isn’t currently supported, the details are practical and lay a good foundation for the use of the technology. Most of the projects do render beautifully on IE 6 and Netscape 6, and I have incorporated many of the tips in this site and others I work on.

There is a great companion Web site as well which provides errata and all of the code detailed within the book.

If you are responsible for Web-based user interfaces this is a must have. One note, this book won’t teach you CSS/DHTML, it assumes you have the basic knowledge of the technologies and their use. It is labeled “Intermediate – Advanced”.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, Reading

A Programmer’s Introduction to PHP 4.0

September 1, 2002 -

This book has proven quite handy of late. I flip through it’s pages at least once a day, and quite often more than that as I’m building my personal site as well as a couple of sites for clients. I have a pretty solid foundation in programming concepts from Perl and JavaScript as well as PHP, so I am using the book as a reference manual as opposed to a linear text-book. There are some concepts which I’ve had to look up on the Web as they were considered basic knowledge.

I recommend the book for those who are comfortable with some programming, but not those new to the language.

Filed Under: Bookshelf, PHP & MySQL