Ken Guest has posted a book review of a new release from Packt Publishing - "jQuery 1.3 with PHP" (by Kae Verens).

This is the first book sent to me from Packt where I wasn't left dizzy from trying to understand just what it is the author was trying to get across. It looks like their proof-reader was awake for this one - totally awesome. [...] "jQuery 1.3 with PHP" is aimed "for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery's capabilities and responsiveness".

Ken mentions the main part of the book, the ten "quick tricks" and detailed sections looking at things like form validation, image manipulation, file management and writing your own jQuery plugins.

It was good to see Kae suggesting use of the PEAR Validate package (or similar) in the Forms and Forms Validation chapter (chapter 4). I had to wonder if there was a PEAR package for creating and shunting down jQuery validation rules to the client - and found that there isn't.

Overall Ken found the book "easy to read" and understandable and recommends it as good reading material for those wanting to combine this powerful duo.

You can also read Kae's own post here.