JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development 1st Edition

Summary first: This book presumes some knowledge of HTML & CSS (look up Duckett' preceding book if necessary), and introduces main elements of Javascript adequate for basic web-design projects, with no claims to comprehensiveness, and it's certainly a success in that respect.PRESENTATION: Impressive. Looks more like a Wired issue than your typical introductory programming/scripting book, as the latter usually try to fit as much information as possible into limited space, which makes pragmatic sense, but makes you not want to pick up the book and proceed. This book uses space liberally, sacrificing limited space (~600 pages + index) for readability ( devoting an entire page to the diagram of a for loop for instance), using very large fonts for summaries, etc.The design is elegant, and also well-thought: Different text colors, italics etc, are fully employed to make newly introduced syntax easier to comprehend. All code sinppets are included in blue boxes clearly separated from the text, where necessary, javascript and html codes are presented side-by-side. For every method / syntax introduced, browser compatibility is given in a table, and more compatible alternatives offered when necessry.SCOPE: As a corollary of the presentation approach, the scope is limited, albeit sensibly. The book aims to present JavaScript to the extent that it can be employed in basic web design, without trying to present the language in its entire functionality, as such important concepts/aspects are left out (Regular expressions, for instance). Also, HTML and CSS are NOT covered in the book(they're covered in Duckett's preceding book "HTML and CSS", prequel to this one), JQuery, Ajax & JSON are covered in a total of 150 pages, providing a decent, sensible introduction only.COMPARISON/SUGGESTIONS: If you want a more comprehensive guide at hand, consider getting Flanagan's "Javascript: The Definitive Guide", or an equivalent. If you want a more compelling and detailed approach to the language, supplement this book with "Eloquent Javascript", a book available, free of charge, online.ONLINE SUPPLEMENTATION: True to its claim, all code presented in the book are available online for bulk-download.Table of Content (CHAPTERS): 1 The ABC of Programming / 2 Basic JS Instructions / 3 Functions, Methods, Objects / 4 Decisions & Loops / 5 DOM / 6 Events / 7 JQuery / 8 Ajax & JSON / 9 APIs / 10 Error Handling & Debugging / 11 Content Panels / 12 Filtering, Searching & Sorting / 13 Form Enhancement & Validation / IndexDURABILITY (WHENCE THE MISSING STAR DERIVES): I've read the entire book on the same bookholder & desk very gently, and still ended up with every page detached from the spine. (For comparison, other books I've read with the same method look almost unused). It's sad to see such a horrible spine/binding chosen for a book when so much care has obviously gone into its composition and design. Hope they revise the spine in future editions.

I had originally rated this book an 1-star to alert the potential buyers to a serious binding defect, which has also been encountered by several readers. In my original review (see below), I did indicate that the book by itself was excellent. I am editing the review to update a recent development soon after my complaint. Jim Minatel, the co-publisher, contacted me and kindly offered a hardcopy replacement, while at the same time, he tried to nail down the remaining defective copies. I am very grateful for his offer.About the book, I found it hard not to consume everything as soon as I could. In a week, I had already covered about 400 pages with great fun. I am an amateur programmer and know very little about web languages and how they operate in the whole scene of client-server relationship. This book helps me so tremendously because it brings in many related aspects around the core of web programming on the client side. Now, I feel more secure to venture another tiny step to look into web server and its implication in future mobile applications.It is worth mentioning that Jon Duckett also has written a book on a related topics: "HTML & CSS" which is also of very high standard.___________(Original review)______________The book is great, but true to many users' experience, the binding started to break apart only a few days after use. I knew about the binding issue from readers' reviews. I thought that when I ordered this in August 2014, the issue would have been fixed already.The extremely poor binding does not do the author justice. The book was conceptually constructed with great thoughts. If I have to rate it solely by its contents, I would have given it a 4-5 stars. I never rated a book according to its package or binding. In general, I should not. This book, however, is a special case because from start to end, it is designed with great care to present the user with a beautiful copy, in addition to leaving the reader a pleasant learning experience.__________________________________________