You might think that full-color illustrations would make very little difference in a technical book.

But  Beginning JavaScript and CSS Development with jQuery by Richard York focuses so much on user interfaces that the added color makes the samples more clear. When the author lists code to change the color of a paragraph, the illustration shows the new and old colors to drive home the concept.

York starts with the basics of jQuery – selecting elements on a page and applying styles dynamically – and moves progressively into more advanced topics, such as making Ajax calls and accessing the jQuery API. He devotes about a third of the book to jQueryUI, a library that contains controls designed to build rich, interactive web interfaces without the need for a lot of code.

York explains the challenges inherent in developing applications with Javascript (the need code to different Document Object Models for each browser) and how jQuery addresses this by providing a single programming model that abstracts away the different browser DOMS.

The book is filled with examples, showing the HTML, CSS and jQuery demonstrating each point. You can read/copy these from the book or download them from the Wrox site.

This book is aimed at someone with experience in HTML and CSS, but little to no Javascript or jQuery knowledge. For those just getting started in jQuery this is an easy to follow book where you can learn the concepts and quickly become productive.