Preface to the Second Edition
It’s been two years since the first edition of jQuery in Action was published. Was it really necessary to update the book so soon?
Absolutely!
Compared to the steady world of server-side languages such as Java, the client-side technologies of the web move at a mighty fast clip. And jQuery isn’t eating anyone’s dust; rather, it’s at the forefront of the rush!
The jQuery team releases a major new version of the library just about every year (lately, striving for every January), in addition to the minor updates that are made throughout the calendar year. That means that there have been numerous minor releases, and two major versions since the publication of the first edition, which was written against jQuery 1.2. And what updates jQuery 1.3 and jQuery 1.4 have been!
With each major release, the capabilities of jQuery have been extended and enhanced in significant ways. Whether it be the addition of custom events, event namespaces, function and effect queuing, or simply the large handful of really useful methods and functions that have been added, the range of capabilities that jQuery spans has increased significantly since the first edition hit the stands.
And that doesn’t even consider jQuery UI! In its nascent stages two years ago, jQuery UI merited a few sections in one chapter of the first edition. Since then, jQuery UI has grown in scope and maturity and warrants a complete book part in this edition, consisting of three full chapters.