Jquery Datatables any help for a new starter??

Jquery Datatables any help for a new starter??

Hi I am quite new to Jquery and having had a good look around at what is available I am very excited by Datatables. My initial excitement has been replaced by a growing sense of frustration. I can not find any documentation that explains how to link to the downloaded files. 

My main Jquery is working fine as I have am able to manipulate the DOM

I have linked to my header file to 

  1. DataTables-1.7.3/media/js/jquery.DataTables.js
I have used the example table from the datatables web site

  2. <table id="table_id">
  3. <thead>
  4. <tr>
  5. <th>Column 1</th>
  6. <th>Column 2</th>
  7. <th>etc</th>
  8. </tr>
  9. </thead>
  10. <tbody>
  11. <tr>
  12. <td>Row 1 Data 1</td>
  13. <td>Row 1 Data 2</td>
  14. <td>etc</td>
  15. </tr>
  16. <tr>
  17. <td>Row 2 Data 1</td>
  18. <td>Row 2 Data 2</td>
  19. <td>etc</td>
  20. </tr>
  21. </tbody>
  22. </table>
At the start of my script I have put the following commands

  2. $(document).ready(function(){
  3.    
  4.    
  5.     $('#table_id').dataTable();
Everything else in this script file is working fine.

Have I linked to everything in the datatables folder that I need to. Do I need to link to the CSS files or are they referenced from the datatables source?

Is there a good tutorial that shows the beginner from start to finish what needs to be done.

Thanks for any help
Simon