Book Image

jQuery Reference Guide

By : Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg
Book Image

jQuery Reference Guide

By: Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg

Overview of this book

<p>jQuery is a powerful, yet easy-to-use JavaScript library that helps web developers and designers add dynamic, interactive elements to their sites, smoothing out browser inconsistencies and greatly reducing development time. In this book, the creators of the popular jQuery learning resource, learningquery.com, share their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm to bring you a comprehensive reference to the popular JavaScript library.<br /><br />This book offers an organized menu of every jQuery method, function, and selector. Each method and function is introduced with a summary of its syntax and a list of its parameters and return value, followed by a discussion, with examples where applicable, to assist in getting the most out of jQuery and avoiding the pitfalls commonly associated with JavaScript and other client-side languages.<br /><br />If you're already familiar with JavaScript programming, this book will help you dive right into advanced jQuery concepts. You'll be able to experiment on your own, trusting the pages of this book to provide information on the intricacies of the library, where and when you need it. If you're still hungry for more, the book shows you how to cook up your own extensions with jQuery's elegant plug-in architecture.<br /><br />This book is a companion to <a href="http://www.packtpub.com/jQuery/book">Learning jQuery</a>: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques. <br /><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/jQuery/book">Learning jQuery</a> begins with a tutorial to jQuery, followed by an examination of common, real-world client-side problems, and solutions for each of them, making it an invaluable resource for answers to all your jQuery questions.<br /><br />jQuery Reference Guide digs deeper into the library, taking you through the syntax specifications and following up with a detailed discussion. You'll discover the untapped possibilities that jQuery makes available, and hone your skills as you return to this guide time and again.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
jQuery Reference Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Tools for Firefox


Mozilla Firefox is the browser of choice for the lion’s share of web developers, and therefore has some of the most extensive and well-respected development tools.

Firebug

The Firebug extension for Firefox is indispensable for jQuery development:

http://www.getfirebug.com/

Some of the features of Firebug are :

  • An excellent DOM inspector for finding names and selectors for pieces of the document

  • CSS manipulation tools for finding out why a page looks a certain way and changing it

  • An interactive JavaScript console

  • A JavaScript debugger that can watch variables and trace code execution

Web Developer Toolbar

This not only overlaps Firebug in the area of DOM inspection, but also contains tools for common tasks like cookie manipulation, form inspection, and page resizing. You can also use this toolbar to quickly and easily disable JavaScript for a site to ensure that functionality degrades gracefully when the user’s browser is less capable:

http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

Venkman

Venkman is the official JavaScript debugger for the Mozilla project. It provides a troubleshooting environment that is reminiscent of the GDB system for debugging programs that are written in other languages.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/

Regular Expressions Tester

Regular expressions for matching strings in JavaScript can be tricky to craft. This extension for Firefox allows easy experimentation with regular expressions using an interface for entering search text:

http://sebastianzartner.ath.cx/new/downloads/RExT/