Microsoft Silverlight Books

It's Packt full of something alright

Determined to become an even bigger joke than Apress, European on-demand publisher Packt is ready and willing to sign anyone who's ever written a single line of code in their lives, hence we have a collar-popping high school dropout whose website looks like some rejected OS X 10.5 advertising collateral instructing us on the proper usage of an outdated version of a UI library. I really struggled to find something in this title that was in some way inspirational or not already publicly documented free of charge, but all I got was rambling thesaurus poetry and contrived code snippets that taught me nothing. It gets an extra star only because their lack of budget means they aren't wasting any more paper than is absolutely necessary.

orangekay
27 June, 2010

This is a good commute book

This book is ideal for for reading while you are not in front of a computer, e.g. while commuting, as much of the code is listed, property controls are usually listed out in full for you to read, and code that is added in the examples is in bold, so that you can get an idea what is possible with jQuery UI without trying every example out. Reading the book through gives you a good idea of the extent of jQuery UI and how much time it would save you in a real project.

However, when I sat down with the book to try out the examples I found it missing the "get up and started" section and seems to assume I had already been using jQuery UI. Chapter 1 devotes only a couple paragraphs and a picture talking about downloading and setting up a "programming environment" (which was nothing more than "copy the files to c:jqueryui"). I found I had to spend my own time at http://jqueryui.com/download figuring out which of the components to download for what, which theme to use, which version to use and what it all meant in terms of using jQuery UI in a project. I want an author of a book to have done all this homework and then show me the "paths of least resistance" so I can get the technology up and running for me as quickly and easily as possible. In the end I created my own "how to" for others to get jQuery UI up and running which complements this book well: http://tanguay.info/web/index.php?pg=howtos&id=21.

So I would say that if you need to read a book about jQuery UI while commuting or sitting beside the pool on vacation, this book is perfect, and it is the first of its kind. Otherwise if you just need to get up to speed on jQuery UI and get a couple of examples running so you know how it works, go to http://jqueryui.com/download, unzip, locate the demos directory and spend a weekend tweeting the examples: you'll be a quasi jQuery UI expert on Monday. Then, put this book in your backpack and read through it during commute time to get ideas on how to tweak the various jQuery UI controls.

Edward Tanguay
03 May, 2009

Perfect blend of reference manual and tutorial

Last night, I finished reading jQuery UI 1.6 by Dan Wellman (published by PACKT Publishing). Released in January 2009, it's slightly behind the times - jQuery UI 1.7 just came out a few weeks ago. But, even if it's not completely up to date, it is still a great book that covers the fundamentals of the jQuery UI library, all the existing widgets, and even touches on the CSS widget framework (something that was really fleshed out in v1.7).

I have never used any of the jQuery UI widgets before, so this is a topic that I was excited to explore. I've been looking for a good UI framework that I could build into and extend within my applications. I know that jQuery is the only Javascript framework that I want to work with, and after reading jQuery UI 1.6, I believe that the jQuery UI library is something that will add tremendous value to my software.

jQuery UI 1.6 is the perfect mix of reference manual and real-world tutorial. It covers every aspect of the jQuery UI behaviors, utility classes, and widgets in a systematic way; but, it keeps it interesting by iteratively applying new ideas to easy-to-follow examples. It does a great job of getting you familiar with all the configuration options, methods, and events, and really gets you to start thinking about where you might apply such aspects in your own programming.

One of the most impressive things about the jQuery Javascript Framework in general is the large amount of functionality that you get with just a little bit of code. The jQuery UI library takes this concept and almost makes a caricature of it; with just a constructor call and some simple settings, the jQuery UI library provides extremely rich, highly interactive features to your software. Take that and then add things like internationalization (i18n) and the ThemeRoller and you have a really robust library with very little effort.

The jQuery framework really brought event-driven programming to Javascript by simplifying and unifying the way events are captured and handled. The jQuery UI library follows nicely on this path. Every action that takes place in jQuery UI widgets or behaviors triggers a number of events, all of which can be listened for and reacted to. For example, with the sortable behavior, dragging an item from list to another triggers the following events:

start
activate
sort
change
beforeStop
stop
remove
update
receive
deactivate

You'll have to look at the book or the documentation to see what each of these events represents; but, with such a robust event model, the jQuery UI library gives you ample ability to monitor and react to all aspects of the UI library behaviors. The jQuery UI library black-boxes its implementation, but it gives you plenty of opportunity to follow along and even modify the way things are working.

The jQuery UI library is narrow in its API but extremely deep in its functionality. Learning how to leverage its entire set of features is not going to take place overnight. But, for anyone looking to get more comfortable with the jQuery UI library, I highly recommend jQuery UI 1.6 by Dan Wellman as a starting point. Like I said above, it's the prefect mix of real world tutorial and reference manual. It will get you solid on the basics and itching for mastery.

Ben Nadel
30 March, 2009

Great but dated on publication

This book was a good book. Yet the author had a couple of obstacles. First version 1.7 came out about the same time as the book and it wasn't compatible. So make SURE you use the exact files he says. He also sticks the JS code at the end of the body section... hopefully in the next version of the book this will move up into the head section of the code. Now aside from those two issues he wrote a wonderful book but had staff go through the book and those were frustrating issues for them. Keep those two things in mind, use this book to learn jQuery UI and then learn the new features and it will be worth your buy.

John Farrar
19 March, 2009

Some credit for being first to market, but...

First and foremost, I would like to mention that this book review and the opinions contained within it reflect my own personal thoughts. While I might contribute and participate on the jQuery & jQuery UI open source project, my intent here is to speak as an individual representing my opinions as an individual.

The author Dan Wellman, of the jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery book from Packt Publishing should be applauded for bringing the first jQuery UI book to completion. You will learn a lot from this well written book about the general usage and implementation of the UI widgets, interactions, and effects. However, the book suffers from an unavoidable downfall: its content is already deprecated. And with technical books timeliness matters.

The books downfall is that it does not cover the most recent advancements and significant changes made in the evolution of the jQuery UI project. The book's focus is clearly based on versions 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2 of jQuery UI (using jQuery 1.2.6). This needs to be mentioned because the release of this book is unfortunately close to the release of version 1.7 of the library. This new release is a significant update.

Specifically, the book differs from the new 1.7 release in the following ways:

- In 1.7 each plugin has been significantly re-factored and optimized from its previous condition.

- As of 1.6rc3, the CSS framework has evolved from the previous system mentioned/used in the book to a new and improved system. All plugins have been significantly updated/modified to use this new framework.

- ThemeRoller (v2.0) has been updated and uses the revamped CSS framework. The book for the most unfortunately ignores this invaluable feature of the Library.

- jQuery UI 1.7 requires and uses jQuery 1.3+

- jQuery UI 1.7 includes a new plugin, the progressbar, which was not featured in the book.

- The autocomplete widget was removed in 1.7, but is covered in chapter 7 of the book.

Now in all fairness to the author, the jQuery UI team and project have been in a transition/growing phase in the last year. Bringing this book to fruition with any sort of up-to-date technical completeness would have been challenging if not impossible. So, as a potential purchaser of this book what you need to clearly understand is that it is specific to the 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2 releases of the UI library. And that release compared to the most recent release are significantly different.

Setting aside the book's lack of coverage of 1.7 and judging it on the merits of what it covers, I would have to say that the book itself is actually very good. It's well written and contains in-depth information about the jQuery UI widgets, interactions, and effects as it pertains to releases 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2. Additionally, it provides in-depth implementations of the widgets and interactions in a realistic context (real world scenarios).

A reader should pick up this book with confidence, but also be prepared to bridge the gap between the information it provides and the current release of the library (highlighted above). With all that said, I recommend giving the book a read, even if only because it's the sole book written on the topic to date.

To sum up, JQuery UI 1.6 provides thorough instruction on how to configure and style the widgets released with jQuery UI 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2. If you're currently working with jQuery UI 1.5.3 to 1.6rc2, or would like to add jQuery UI to a project that must be compatible with jQuery core 1.2.6 or earlier versions, then this book is for you.





Cody Lindley
06 March, 2009

Good, practical uses of the jQuery UI detailed

Dan Wellman covers the jQuery UI library in a thorough, clear, interesting and useful way. Not only do you get a clear explanation for how to get things working in quick easy basic ways, but configuring more advanced options is covered well. And, every chapter has an elaborate, realistic, interesting example showing the true real-world utility of the portion of the UI just covered. Several of the examples are more than useful, but very interesting and inspire one to make similar applications. One widget example shows how to use ajax with the jQuery UI Dialog, which is very nice and highly practical. jQuery UI 1.6 covers not only the high level widgets but also very important, interesting, and extremely useful "interaction helpers", including drag-and-drop and reorderable lists ("sortables") - with information provided on how to do callbacks (this, including information on how one might use callbacks for database manipulation and/or with cookies). All the points at which events occur and where you could wire-in your own custom functionality within the widgets and interaction helpers are exposed.

B. Jesness
24 February, 2009