First up:
Jim Priest does an excellent job of reviewing the first couple of chapter's of Karl Swedberg and Jonathan Chaffer's newly released jQuery book,
Learning jQuery : Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques
My favorite quote from his review is:
Glancing at the Table of Contents – I'm happy to note there are no basic introductory 'HTML/Javascript' chapters (no fluff!) you dive right into a simple jQuery script where you manipulate some CSS.
That's what I would expect from a book written by Karl; good content and no fluff.
Be sure to checkout the review here:
http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/07/13/5-minute-jquery-book-review/
and support Karl's hard work by ordering the book here:
http://www.packtpub.com/jQuery/book/mid/100407j4kh3d
Next:
If you've been in development for awhile and are serious about coding, then you have to have heard of and/or read Dr. Dobb's Journal magazine. Dr. Dobb's magazine is truly the best publication for hardcore developers that want to learn new techniques for improving their development skills. It tackles a variety of programming languages and really gets to the juicy stuff without boring you with mundane commentary.
Well, you can now add jQuery to the list of frameworks reviewed by DDJ. That's right, DDJ published a 4 page online article about jQuery titled Getting Started with jQuery.
It runs you through the basic steps of getting up to speed with the jQuery library and they do a good job of explaining the basics. Its definitely a good read for those starting out with jQuery.
Having a well-known magazine such as DDJ publish this article is a big step for the jQuery project and we appreciate DDJ taking the time to put up such a great writeup.
Last but not least:
Developer extraordinaire Remy Sharp, posted on the jQuery list about a fun app he developed called Speech Bubbles. Using bookmarklets, it would allow you to attach speech bubbles to specific parts of web pages. It was REALLY cool and Remy got a lot of kudos from the jQuery community.
Well, it looks like others have also fallen in love with this app as Ajaxian has now picked up on this and made a post about Remy's work. Go check it out here:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/friday-fun-with-speech-bubbles
and show your support for Remy.
