Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Overview of this book

To build interesting, interactive sites, developers are turning to JavaScript libraries such as jQuery to automate common tasks and simplify complicated ones. Because many web developers have more experience with HTML and CSS than with JavaScript, the library's design lends itself to a quick start for designers with little programming experience. Experienced programmers will also be aided by its conceptual consistency.Learning jQuery Third Edition is revised and updated for version 1.6 of jQuery. You will learn the basics of jQuery for adding interactions and animations to your pages. Even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled, this book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features.Starting with an introduction to jQuery, you will first be shown how to write a functioning jQuery program in just three lines of code. Learn how to add impact to your actions through a set of simple visual effects and to create, copy, reassemble, and embellish content using jQuery's DOM modification methods. The book will step you through many detailed, real-world examples, and even equip you to extend the jQuery library itself with your own plug-ins.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Learning jQuery Third Edition
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Additional options


The Ajax toolbox provided by jQuery is well-stocked. We've covered several of the available options, but we've just scratched the surface. While there are too many variants to cover here, we will give an overview of some of the more prominent ways to customize Ajax communications.

The low-level Ajax method

We have seen several methods that all initiate Ajax transactions. Internally, jQuery maps each of these methods onto variants of the $.ajax() global function. Rather than presuming one particular type of Ajax activity, this function takes a map of options that can be used to customize its behavior.

Our first example, Listing 6.1, loaded an HTML snippet using $('#dictionary').load('a.html'). This action could instead be accomplished with $.ajax() as follows:

$.ajax({
  url: 'a.html',
  success: function(data) {
    $('#dictionary').html(data);
  }
});

Listing 6.21

Rather than take separate arguments for URL, data, and a success callback, $.ajax() takes a single map of over...