Comments about oreilly RaphaelJS:

Have been using Raphael on and off for the past 3 years but continue to struggle with some of the more complex topics such as sets, data binding and events.

As I have never been disappointed by an O'Reilly Press book, I took the plunge in the hope of having some of my questions answered.

The book is wonderfully written with just enough humuor to render it a carefree romp! Complex issues are tackled with insight & simplicity, and the examples have enough depth to get you thinking and to see how the library operates.

Demonstrating code via JSFiddle was exceedingly helpful, as were the references to tools such as SVG To Raphael and ColorBrewer.

Much of the early part of the book is more suited to a novice but it is still enlightening to see the coding patterns, functional programming styles and simplifications used by Chris.

I received a big leg-up reading this book so it is not a negative criticism when I say I would have preferred even more depth on some of the topics i.e. the "why" behind some of the code.

For example, traditionally we manage data using raw JavaScript objects yet Raphael objects have the capacity to store data via their .data property – when is it best to use which approach?

Similarly, when layering objects e.g. text on a box and you need the box to react to a click, you need to add event handlers for both the rectangle and the text – what about Event Delegation to reduce the number of events being managed?

A great book. Get it…

Comments about oreilly RaphaelJS:

I purchased this book as a reference for when I'm unplugged from the internet. At 122 pages the book is fairly short, but Chris provides a great overview of the drawing and animations apis. I found his examples were short and simple which is great. The examples also covered a range of concepts from drawing curves to animating alongs paths. Before purchasing this book I had some notions about how I needed to structure my next SVG project and his writing helped me organize those thoughts. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in SVG.

P.S. I've also been exploring Snapsvg which is another SVG library written by RaphaelJS creator Dmitry Baranovsky. Snapsvg provides a similar api as RaphaelJS and this book's material/content can be used for both libraries.