For the last couple of weeks, I was introduced to a book from Packt Publishing. Called jQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide by Dan Wellman.

A quick background on Packt Publishing. They are a company that publishes books and tutorials on everything related to web development.

This book targets how to create animation techniques with jQuery. For those who don’t know what jQuery is. jQuery is a JavaScript library to help you simplify effects, techniques, and interaction on your website.

Starting Off With jQuery

Starting off I was a little intimidated by jumping into jQuery because JavaScript wasn't my strong point. But going through the different chapters the code wasn’t hard to understand.

They give you step by step instructions on what coding to insert or what coding changes they have made. If you don’t understand the code, there are also text descriptions before and after each example.

jQuery is Cross Compatible...But....

jQuery works across all internet browsers, but there are some problems you will face getting it to work in Internet Explorer (IE).

Don’t worry the writer of this book has you covered. He has some hacks and/or workarounds already included in the code to keep everything synced up.

The Lesson Plans

If you get lost or things aren’t working like they should. You can download entire lessons from the website that is included in the book. You can view their code and compare it to yours.

Use Notepad++ to compare plugin. It will compare two different sheets and highlight the lines that are different.

If you still can’t see where you messed up, you can use their code to continue through the other lessons.

Some people learn better in more of a teaching environment when learning new things. Well just for those types of people, there are small pop quizzes at the end of each chapter to keep you on your toes.

Some of them are really hard and you might have to go back and look for the answer. But most of the questi

Animation Features

jQuery animations and effects you will find in this book will include:

• Fading
• MouseOver
• Color Effects
• Dynamic Loading
• Sliding Transitions

You will touch about every slide transition you can think of. Like Bouncing, Highlighting, Shaking, Resizing, Blinds, Folding and Disappearing.

With all the different options that come with jQuery, you will find one that works for you.

What Does the Future Hold

For those who keep up with web development. HTML5 and CSS3 are here and will be standard in the next couple of years from the time of this writing.

This book has already jumped on board, giving you examples with the new HTML5 and CSS3 elements. There is a whole chapter of CSS3 Animations, using 2D transforms and 3D transforms.

There Is Always a Negative Side

There are a few bad things I found in this book. Some could be my lack of knowledge about JavaScript and jQuery. With that being said, if you understand JavaScript and jQuery you will have no problems.

Either way some chapters I had trouble getting the examples to work. After going through it a couple of times I pulled the lesson code example and compared mine. There were some changes in the code that I did not see in the book.

Having the ability to see the finished code got me back on track and continuing through the lesson.

Overall Summary

Overall this book is solid, they give you everything they promise, plus more. If you want to learn jQuery Animations, then read up on this book.

I wouldn’t say this book will teach you jQuery. But it will build your basic knowledge of jQuery. And prepare you to create some complex animations.

If you want to take jQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide for a test drive you can check out their sample chapter. If can also visit Packt Publishing and purchase the book for yourself.