jQuery 1.3 with PHP
Product Description
Enhance your PHP applications by increasing their responsiveness through jQuery and its plugins. Combine client-side jQuery with your server-side PHP to make your applications more efficient and exciting for the clientLearn about some of the most popular jQuery plugins and methodsCreate powerful and responsive user interfaces for your PHP applicationsComplete examples of PHP and jQuery with clear explanationsNo JavaScript expertise or jQuery experience required <... More >>
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jQuery 1.3 with PHP by Kae Varens is a great book that shows you how to interface jQuery with PHP. It’s different from any other web development book I’ve read because it approaches things from the opposite perspective that I personally am used to – from the server to the client. It’s aimed at competent PHP developers that want to learn how to use jQuery. Strictly speaking I’m outside of the scope of who the book is aimed at, but fortunately I knew just enough PHP to follow along with the examples and know roughly what is happening in the server-side code. It is made clear very early on who the book is aimed at.
One thing that I really liked about this book was that as well as the strong focus on jQuery throughout (as you’d expect) the author also included not just one, but several different examples of using jQuery UI in conjunction with PHP. jQuery UI is the official UI library for jQuery so I think it’s important that it should be covered in this kind of book.
Overall this is a great book with very thorough and well-explained examples and plenty of code that the average server-side developer could take away and reuse. I would certainly recommend it for server-side developers with little knowledge of JavaScript.
Rating: 5 / 5
jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries on the web right now, and it can used for many situations in web design and development. One of the most used sever-side languages on the web is PHP and uysing jQuery and PHP together is a great combination as the author Kae Verens demonstrates in this great book.
The author does an excellent job of explaining some of the cool things like the many plugins that are available for creating things as inteactive select boxes, tabs, accordians and how ot integrate these plugin scripts within your PHP code with real-life examples.
Other topics covered by the author are file management, image manipulation, calendars, and drag and drop manipulation. There are lots of examples and code snipets that are used which helps the reader learn everything ste-by-step.
The book is geared towards the beginner to intermediate PHP programmer as well as the would-be programmer who is a client-side designer with some JavaScript experience.
I highly recommed this book to anybody who wants learn how to integrate some cool effects and commercial interactivity to their websites.
A great book!
Rating: 5 / 5
I have to admit that when I picked this book up I was hoping to learn a thing or two about php. However, after a careful read of the book’s description any disappoint I felt was my own fault, as the author is very clear about the book’s intentions. It’s clear the author intended this book for readers who have already mastered php and are seeking additional knowledge about JavaScript/jQuery.
So, if you are a php developer who has never bothered to look over the fence at client-side coding practices, this book is ideally for you. If you are a JavaScript developer looking to learn a thing or two about PHP you might be frustrated as the author assumes you are already “good” at php development. Because of this assumption made by the author, very little insight into the php code is given. But, to the author’s credit, he warns us about this fact upfront.
Regardless of your knowledge of php or JavaScript/jQuery, this book does an excellent job at presenting many of the patterns and concepts centered around using AJAX and UI patterns to eliminate complete page reloads. I enjoyed the coded examples in spirit more than I enjoyed reading the code. While the JavaScript code gets the job done, I found the use of the custom DOM ready event to be unnecessary, as well as the organization of functions in the global window scope to be a bit dangerous. On the positive side, I did get the impression that the author understood jQuery completely and utilized the library efficiently and effectively.
In my opinion, this is a great book for a very specific type of reader. And that reader would be a php developer who is disconnected to what’s been going on with JavaScript and client-side coding paradigms common in today’s web development world.
Rating: 4 / 5