Preface to the First Edition

One of your authors is a grizzled veteran whose involvement in programming dates back to when FORTRAN was the bomb, and the other is an enthusiastic domain expert, savvy beyond his years, who’s barely ever known a world without an Internet. How did two people with such disparate backgrounds come together to work on a joint project?

The answer is, obviously, jQuery.

The paths by which we came together over our affection for this most useful of client-side tools are as different as night and day.

I (Bear) first heard of jQuery while I was working on Ajax in Practice. Near the end of the creation cycle of a book is a whirlwind phase known as the copyedit when the chapters are reviewed for grammatical correctness and clarity (among other things) by the copyeditor and for technical correctness by the technical editor. At least for me, this is the most frenetic and stressful time in the writing of a book, and the last thing I want to hear is “you really should add a completely new section.”

One of the chapters I contributed to Ajax in Practice surveys a number of Ajax-enabling client-side libraries, one of which I was already quite familiar with (Prototype) and others (the Dojo Toolkit and DWR) on which I had to come up to speed pretty quickly.

While juggling what seemed like a zillion tasks (all the while holding down a day job, running a side business, and dealing with household issues), the technical editor, Valentin Crettaz, casually drops this bomb: “So why don’t you have a section on jQuery?”

“J who?” I asked.

I was promptly treated to a detailed dissertation on how wonderful this fairly new library was and how it really should be part of any modern examination of Ajax-enabling client-side libraries. I asked around a bit. “Have any of you ever heard of this jQwerty library?”

I received a large number of positive responses, all enthusiastic and all agreeing that jQuery really was the cat’s pajamas. On a rainy Sunday afternoon, I spent about four hours at the jQuery site reading documentation and writing little test programs to get a feel for the jQuery way of doing things. Then I banged out the new section and sent it to the technical editor to see if I had really gotten it.

The section was given an enthusiastic thumb’s up, and we went on to finally complete the Ajax in Practice book. (That section on jQuery eventually went on to be published in the online version of Dr. Dobb’s Journal.)

When the dust had settled, my frenzied exposure to jQuery had planted relentless little seeds in the back of my mind. I’d liked what I’d seen during my headlong research into jQuery, and I set out to learn more. I started using jQuery in web projects. I still liked what I saw. I started replacing older code in previous projects to see how jQuery would simplify the pages. And I really liked what I saw.

Enthusiastic about this new discovery and wanting to share it with others, I took complete leave of my senses and submitted a proposal for jQuery in Action to Manning. Obviously, I must’ve been convincing. (As penance for causing such mayhem, I asked the technical editor who started all the trouble to also be the technical editor for this book. I’ll bet that taught him!)

It’s at that point that the editor, Mike Stephens, asked, “How would you like to work with Yehuda Katz on this project?”

“Yehenta who?” I asked...

Yehuda came to this project by a different route; his involvement with jQuery predates the days when it even had version numbers. After he stumbled on the Selectables Plugin, his interest in the jQuery core library was piqued. Somewhat disappointed by the (then) lack of online documentation, he scoured the wikis and established the Visual jQuery site (visualjquery.com).

Before too long, he was spearheading the push for better online documents, contributing to jQuery, and overseeing the plugin architecture and ecosystem, all while evangelizing jQuery to the Ruby community.

Then came the day when he received a call from Manning (his name having been dropped to the publisher by a friend), asking if he’d be interested in working with this Bear guy on a jQuery book...

Despite the differences in our backgrounds, experiences, and strengths, and the manner in which we came together on this project, we’ve formed a great team and have had a lot of fun working together. Even geographic distance (I’m in the heart of Texas, and Yehuda is on the California coast) proved no barrier. Thank goodness for email and instant messaging!

We think that the combination of our knowledge and talents brings you a strong and informative book. We hope you have as much fun reading this book as we had working on it.

We just advise you to keep saner hours.