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Now that Summer has arrived and things are really beginning to heat up, I’m always looking for an excuse to stay in the AC on a lazy afternoon. If you’re like me, one of the best things to do in the summer is to learn something new.

If you’re a developer, I highly recommend that you make a Summer project out of learning the excellent jQuery JavaScript framework. jQuery is easy to pick up and learn on your own, and it’s tremendously helpful no matter how advanced of a coder you are. If you spend any time developing front-end projects for the web, a working knowledge of jQuery is one of the most valuable tools you can add to your toolbox.

You can get started with some of the excellent documentation over at the jQuery site. If trial-by-fire learning isn’t your thing, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of JavaScript: The Missing Manual by David McFarland. In addition to being an excellent introduction to JavaScript itself, the second half of the book is practically dedicated to jQuery and its many applications out in the real world. The book itself is extremely readable, and I actually really enjoyed learning with it (something I can’t say for the other coding books I’ve gone through).

I think you’ll find that one of the most exciting things about jQuery is the sheer amount of awesome things you can do with it. Beyond the out-of-the-box functionality like (easy!) AJAX and DOM effects, there are also thousands of plugins freely available that will be a tremendous help for your own projects. Here are two favorites that I have used in the past…

Cycle Plugin

I’ve used this plugin dozens of times already; it’s just so well thought out that I really have no desire to try and reinvent the wheel with my own code. Simply put, the Cycle Plugin is built to help you implement any type of slideshow functionality you have in mind. It includes dozens of sleek effects that are easy to implement, and you can do some really advanced stuff with just a few lines of code. You can see one of my implementations of it on the rotating feature section of longhollow.com. Click here to download the Cycle Plugin.

HoverIntent Plugin

Here’s another little slice of awesomeness. Have you ever visited a page and been overwhelmed by all of the mouseover events that are triggered as you simply move your mouse across the page? HoverIntent solves a simple problem by adding a custom delay before any page element fires a mouseover event. This can clean up your UI a lot and give your visitors a less-confusing browsing experience. You can see HoverIntent in action on the main navigation at longhollow.com. Click here to get the HoverIntent Plugin.

As you can see, jQuery makes it easy to pull off functionality that was unreachable by the average web developer only a few years ago. Take some time this summer to jump in and see what you can learn to use on your next project; you won’t regret it.