Fancy Form Design

I bought this book thinking I could download the source code and modify it to suit my needs, to save time. I am OK with CSS and HTML but a bit shaky on JavaScript and Jquery.
However I found almost no information on the Jquery plugins used, except to say where they came from. I would have liked information on how to modify these to match the changes made to the forms. Is there any way to do that (easily)? Otherwise I will still need to build my own validation plugin and so could have saved my money.
It seems that Sitepoint books have got much worse over the years, filling up pages with repeated information, screen shots and code lists instead of giving us the detailed information we used to get when the books were good value for money. I shall not buy any more.

John.