JQuery / Javascript

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leo0787sx

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#115723 4-Apr-2013 14:40

Hello,

I currently manage a 3 person web team including myself and wondered if anyone knows of any good JQuery/Javascript courses in New Zealand, preferably Christchurch?

Google seems to return University courses full time, doesn't seem to be any day/week long courses.

Thank you.

Regs

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Snowflake

#793414 4-Apr-2013 19:42

have you considered a pluralsight subscription?

http://www.pluralsight.com/training
http://www.pluralsight.com/training/Courses/TableOfContents/jquery-fundamentals

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chiefie

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#793480 4-Apr-2013 20:39

Being a web developer myself, knowledge of JavaScript is a must for any web developer, jQuery has a good API documentation - and a good developer should be able to read through and understand API documentation.

Having said that, JavaScript is pretty easy to understand and can be as easy and simple as you want it to be, or it can do complex and sophisticated stuff. You'll probably be concerning on what CSS and HTML tags can be used on what browsers and whether if some of the JavaScript functions are working across these browsers. jQuery and many other plug-ins or libraries can help alleviate these barriers.

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leo0787sx

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#793697 5-Apr-2013 09:28

We can read Javascript/JQuery and make changes but its more writing things from scratch, I find myself using W3 to help piece together code or taking other code and modifying it.

chiefie

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#793717 5-Apr-2013 10:09

leo0787sx: We can read Javascript/JQuery and make changes but its more writing things from scratch, I find myself using W3 to help piece together code or taking other code and modifying it.

Often that's not uncommon, and also, perhaps before writing the first code, plan out what you want to actually achieve and how something is functioning. A preliminary of psuedo-coding of ideas and methods probably will be useful then translate that into JavaScript later.

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reven

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#793737 5-Apr-2013 10:22

jquery is amazing, i think its the best thing to happen to javascript. but now with AngularJS, i find myself writing less and less jquery plugins/code.

I strongly suggest you look at angularjs as well as jquery, angular allows you to bind objects to a template/page so you don't need to load values from the page into javascript for posting to the server.

eg instead of doing something like var name = $('#name').val()'; where #name is a input, you can just bind the input to the value with ng-model="name" so when the input changes the value changes automatically.

hard to explain the benefits of angularjs here (code usually gets formatted away in this texteditor). but check it out. I still encourage learning jquery, just dont use it as heavily now as I would of used it 2 years ago.

with angular my javascript code is reduced to about 20% of what it use to be.

jahc

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#799935 15-Apr-2013 23:37

Hey, I wouldn't bother with a course. There's a lot of amazing books around, and you can Google your questions that dozens of people have already asked before.. you'll find that 99% of them will have already been answered.

I found this Javascript tutorial quite amazing. I found a ton of awesome stuff I didnt realise you could do in Javascript.
http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/

Once you got Javascript down, have a go at JQuery.. check out the docs on jquery.com, and get used to writing selectors to find elements on your page. Visit random sites, and use debugging console's in Firefox or Chrome or whatever you like to use, and play with your selectors. Type $('input') and hit enter, see what it returns.. get complicated and specific. Modify it when it doesn't find what you want..

Once you got that down, start playing with frameworks that sound useful. Someone has mentioned Angular, which I'm not familiar with.. but it sounds similar to knockout.js which binds properties to your html.. e.g. change a value in your input element and the property thats bound to it is updated automatically without the need for events to assign values from element to variable, etc.

If you want a clearer separation of concerns, have a look at something like backbone.js which implements a client side model view controller pattern.

Bear in mind that JQuery is starting to get quite big, and if you want JQuery functionality but without the need for compatibility with older browsers, you could try something faster and more compact like Zepto.js.

Also, check out Underscore.js. It does a LOT, but what I like most is the functions for working with collections and JSON.

And also, look into templating (defining a block of HTML that can be repeated with properties inserted). Everyones doing it these days.. kendo, knockout, underscore, etc.. it's good.