Want to add more interactivity and polish to your websites? Discover how jQuery can help you build complex scripting functionality in just a few lines of code. With Head First jQuery, you'll quickly get up to speed on this amazing JavaScript library by learning how to navigate HTML documents while handling events, effects, callbacks, and animations. By the time you've completed the book, you'll be incorporating Ajax apps, working seamlessly with HTML and CSS, and handling data with PHP, MySQL and JSON.

If you want to learn—and understand—how to create interactive web pages, unobtrusive script, and cool animations that don't kill your browser, this book is for you.

Use jQuery with DOM to overcome the limitations of HTML and CSS

Learn how jQuery selectors and actions work together

Write functions and wire them to interface elements

Use jQuery effects to create actions on the page

Make your pages come alive with animation

Build interactive web pages with jQuery and Ajax

Build forms in web applications

Ryan Benedetti holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Montana and works as a Web Developer/Multimedia Specialist for the University of Portland. He works with Flash, ActionScript, Adobe's Creative Suite, Drupal, Liferay Portal, and Apache's Jakarta Velocity Templating language.

For seven years, Ryan served as Department Head for Information Technology and Computer Engineering at SKC. Prior to that, he worked as editor and information systems specialist for a river, stream, and wetland research program in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana.

Ryan's poems have been published in Cut Bank and Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse. He spends his free hours painting, cartooning, playing blues harmonica, making Flash learning toys, and practicing zazen. He spends his best moments with his daughter, his son, and his sweetheart, Shonna, in Portland, OR.

Ronan Cranley is the Senior Web Developer/Systems Manager at University of Portland, Oregon. He has worked on an array of different projects in PHP, VB.Net, C# and Java. These include a client-side GIS system, a homegrown content management system, a calendaring/scheduling system, and a jQuery/Google Maps mashup. Ronan also serves as the SQL Server DBA for the University.