About the Authors
Jonathan Chaffer is the Chief Technology Officer of Structure Interactive, an interactive agency located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There he oversees web development projects using a wide range of technologies, and continues to collaborate on day-to-day programming tasks as well.
In the open-source community, Jonathan has been very active in the Drupal CMS project, which has adopted jQuery as its JavaScript framework of choice. He is the creator of the Content Construction Kit, a popular module for managing structured content on Drupal sites. He is responsible for major overhauls of Drupals menu system and developer API reference.
Jonathan lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, Jennifer.
I would like to thank Jenny, who thinks this is wonderful even if it bores her to tears. Id also like to thank Karl for sharing my love for linguistics, producing a book that hopefully is grammatically immaculate enough to cover up any technical sins.
Karl Swedberg is a web developer at Structure Interactive in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he spends much of his time implementing design with a focus on web standardssemantic HTML, well-mannered CSS, and unobtrusive JavaScript.
Before his current love affair with web development, Karl worked as a copy editor, a high-school English teacher, and a coffee house owner. His fascination with technology began in the early 1990s when he worked at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and it has continued unabated ever since.
Karls other obsessions include photography, karate, English grammar, and fatherhood. He lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, Sara, and his two children, Benjamin and Lucia.
I wish to thank my wife, Sara, for her steadfast love and support during my far-flung adventures into esoteric nonsense. Thanks also to my two delightful children, Benjamin and Lucia. Jonathan Chaffer has my deepest respect and gratitude for his willingness to write this book with me and to explain the really difficult aspects of programming in a gentle manner when I just dont get it. Finally, I wish to thank John Resig for his brilliant JavaScript library and his ongoing encouragement for the book, as well as Rey Bango, Brandon Aaron, Klaus Hartl, Jrn Zaefferer, Dave Methvin, Mike Alsup, Yehuda Katz, Stefan Petre, Paul Bakaus, Michael Geary, Glen Lipka, and the many others who have provided help and inspiration along the way.
About the Reviewers
Jrn Zaefferer is a software developer and a consultant from Kln, Germany. He is currently working at Maxence Integration Technologies GmbH. His work is centered on developing web-based applications as JSR-168 portlets in JEE environments, mostly Websphere Portal 5.1 based. He is currently working on a project based on JSF and Spring.
Dave Methvin has more than 25 years of software development experience in both the Windows and UNIX environments. His early career focused on embedded software in the fields of robotics, telecommunications, and medicine. Later, he moved to PC-based software projects using C/C++ and web technologies.
Dave also has more than 20 years of experience in computer journalism. He was Executive Editor at PC Tech Journal and Windows Magazine , covering PC and Internet issues; his how-to columns on JavaScript offered some of the first cut-and-paste solutions to common web page problems. He was also a co-author of the book Networking Windows NT (John Wiley & Sons, 1997).
Currently, Dave is Chief Technology Officer at PC Pitstop, a website that helps users fix and optimize the performance of their computers. He is also active in the jQuery community.
Mike Alsup is a Senior Software Developer at ePlus where he works on J2EE and web development projects. He is a graduate from Potsdam College and has been serving the software industry since 1989. Mike lives in Palmyra, NY with his wife, Diane, and their three sons.
His jQuery plug-ins can be found at http://malsup.com/jquery/.
Paul Bakaus is a programmer and core developer living in Germany. His work with jQuery has been focused on transforming jQuery into a high-speed library capable of handling difficult large-scale rich interface operations. He was largely responsible for creating the jQuery Dimensions plug-in and he now works together with Stefan Petre on the rich effects and components library Interface. Paul is currently involved in creating a JavaScript multiplayer game featuring jQuery.
Dan Bravender has been working with open-source software for over 10 years. His fondest memories are of staying up all night to install and compile Linux in college with his roommate. He has collected a massive collection of German board games. When not playing board games, he enjoys playing soccer and hockey and studying Korean and Chinese etymology. He misses working with Karl and Jon and is very proud of all the hard work that they put into this book.
Preface
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 jQuery Reference Guide , you can investigate this library's features in a thorough, accessible format.
This book offers an organized menu of every jQuery method, function, and selector. Entries are accompanied by detailed descriptions and helpful recipes that will assist you in getting the most out of jQuery and avoiding the pitfalls commonly associated with JavaScript and other client-side languages. 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.