A Smarter Way to Learn JQuery

Book excerpt: You're going to get the hang of jQuery in less time than you might expect. And the knowledge will stick. Why? Because this isn't just a book. It's a book plus 1,500 free interactive online exercises. It's the exercises that are going to turn you into a real jQuery coder. Cognitive research shows that reading alone doesn't buy you much long-term retention. But if you read less and do more-if you read a short passage and then immediately put it into practice-everything changes. Washington University researchers say that being asked to retrieve information increases long-term retention by four hundred percent. Practice also makes learning more interesting. Ten minutes of reading followed by twenty minutes of practice keeps you awake and spurs you on. And it keeps you honest. If you only read, it's easy to kid yourself that you're learning more than you are. But when you're challenged to produce the goods, there's a moment of truth. You know that you know-or that you don't. If you find you're a little shaky on this point or that, you can review the material, then re-do the exercise. That's all it takes to master this book from beginning to end.