Who this book is written for

The book is introduced as below:

"This book is written for web designers and front-end developers who already have good knowledge of HTML and CSS, and some experience with jQuery. If you want to learn how to animate the user interface of your web applications with jQuery, then this book is for you."

I think this description of the target audience fits very well. Inside you'll find some good solid examples of JQuery animations and the principles behind them. The content is definitely aimed at a more introductory audience and anyone with at least a few months real world JQuery experience will quickly grasp what is going on.

The Packt site advertises that this is what you should learn from the book.

What you will learn from this book:

• Implement subtle UI effects, user-triggered animations and full-page feature animations to animate the user interface of your web applications
• Fade, hide, shrink, and slide your animations using jQuery's built-in animation helper methods
• Create custom animations using jQuery's animate() method
• Discover how the animation queue works and how it can be manipulated to create complex animations
• Simulate animation in a variety of ways using other non-animation-specific jQuery methods
• Discover how jQuery can be used to make the latest CSS3 and canvas animations work cross-browser
• Obtain and set up jQuery UI-- the official user interface library for jQuery
• Define custom animations that can be complex and specialized
• Extend the jQuery library with brand new functions and methods in the form of plugins
• Get your images scrolled in a certain direction, and at a certain speed, depending on the movements of the mouse pointer
• Create a continuous header animation manually with just a few lines of code

Most of these things are achieved in the book although a few of them are laboured on a little too long for my liking. Some of the JQuery animation methods are explained in turn, whereas it may have been more useful to explain the concepts more thoroughly than re-producing near on identical code examples.

It does quite comprehensively cover almost all the JQuery animation methods I've encountered as a developer. It contains a good breadth of knowledge in how to apply the animations as well, highlighting things you should consider then using them, and potential user issues that may be encountered.

Apart from that small gripe it was quite an interesting read. I didn't take too much away from it technically, but it certainly made me think about how I want some of my interactions within pages to work in the future.

You can read more about the JQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide and read a sample chapter here : https://www.packtpub.com/jquery-14-animation-techniques-beginners-guide/book