Andy asked me:

Hi Ray. It seems that JQuery is something I need to learn and for the record, I'm a pretty mediocre JavaScripter. What books and tutorials could you suggest that would get me going? I need to focus on user interface components.

Great question, and I intentionally titled this post, "Ask the jQuery Noob", just to make it clear that, like yourself, I'm still learning this myself. This here then is my personal list of resources I used to help me pick up jQuery. I'm really curious to hear what other resources folks recommend as well.

Do note though that Andy mentions he is a mediocre JavaScripter. I think if I had one complaint about jQuery it is that the framework isn't the easiest to pick up for beginners. I was lucky. I spent many years avoiding JavaScript. Even though I had begun my career doing a lot of JavaScript and DHTML, I had ignored it for probably ten years when - well - it just wasn't fun to code for IE and Netscape. When I finally came back to JavaScript (mainly to pick up AJAX), I started with Adobe Spry. Spry is a very friendly framework, especially for those with ColdFusion experience. I used Spry quite a bit and got a bit famaliar with JavaScript again. When it came time to start learning jQuery, I wasn't quite as rough as I used to be. I still felt that some of the docs weren't as friendly as they could be.

When I blog/teach on the topic, I try to focus on some of the things I found... rough about the jQuery experience. For me, this was selectors and chaining. It seemed like many jQuery examples were complex: $(".something > $not:foo.good ul").methodone().methodtwo.method10().morestuff().finallyafunct(function() { }). Ok, so that's not a real example, but when I saw code like that it overwhelmed me. Therefore when I present (cue blog link) I try to focus on selectors and how important they are, and I tend to give very short, simple examples.

So um - you wanted a list of resources. Maybe I should stop rambling and get to it?

• First off, a lot depends on how you learn. If you like to read books, I stromg recommend Learning jQuery 1.3 (link is to my review). This book was a life saver for me in getting over my initial 'humps' in learning jQuery.
• If books aren't your thing, there is an upcoming conference in Boston. It includes introductory material that could be great if you like to learn in a classroom (well, conference room). For me, I prefer to get introductions to stuff at conferences, but I generally have to follow up with more in depth research on my own. So conferences are great for me to get me interested in new topics that I can spend more time on later.
• The jQuery website has documentation as well. I think the docs could be fleshed out a bit more and organized a bit nicer, but it's free and available right now.
• Some folks like to use mailing lists. I don't think they are a great way to learn per se, but are better for support. Sitll though, check out the mailing lists available. I've had great luck getting my questions answered, so it may be a good resource to use for clarification.
• Another book, and one I haven't read, is jQuery UI 1.6. I bring it up since you specifically mentioned UI. I'd still recommend getting comfortable with jQuery in general first, but you could always pick up this book when you get Learning jQuery 1.3.
• Last but not least, I'm a huge fan of playing! Most of my blog entries here are the result of me testing out various jQuery features and just sharing the results. This is how I learn best. I think so and so feature is cool, so I figure out some way to demo it myself and write up example code.

So again, this is what has been helpful for me, and what I've seen out there for jQuery. What would folks recommend for Andy? (And shoot, what would folks recommend for me, a 'not-quite-beginner'?

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