jQuery Introduction

Last Updated Jul 21, 2015, 12:00:06 PM




What is jQuery

jQuery is a lightweight and cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting program built on the philosophy of "write less and do more". jQuery is free for the development process, open-source software licensed under the MIT


jQuery was introduced on August 26, 2006, to overcome the disadvantages of JavaScript and considerably simplifies the JavaScript programming easier to learn and use in the development of websites.

Overcoming javascript disadvantages by jQuery:


jQuery simplifies the core philosophy of writing many or too many lines of code in JavaScript to a single line of code by wrapping them into simple methods. We may invoke these methods by simply calling its name as sort, each, eq method, etc. jQuery also simplifies many complicated things exist in JavaScript like AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.


jQuery Features

  1. jQuery made for DOM manipulation

    jQuery makes it easier to select DOM elements, traverse them and modifying their content by using a cross-browser open source selector engine called Sizzle.
    What is the use of sizzle engine? - StackOverflow


  2. Event handling

    jQuery makes it easy to implement a wide variety of events. The most common events are link clicking without the looking into the actual HTML code itself.

  3. AJAX Support

    The extensive jQuery library gives the flexibility for developers to work with AJAX to implement responsive web pages.

  4. Animations

    jQuery allows developers to build interactive animations on the web page to give interactive and responsive user experience to the users.

  5. Lightweight

    The jQuery is a lightweight library - about 19KB in size ( Minified and zipped ).

    What is the difference between minified and zipped version of jQuery - css-tricks


  6. Cross Browser Support

    The jQuery library has no excuse to build the native web applications which works on all modern browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari.

    What is Cross Browser Testing?- Wikipedia

  7. Latest Technology

    jQuery has support for the latest technologies like CSS3 selectors, HTML5

jQuery Version

The current version of jQuery used in web development is jQuery 2.1.1. jQuery Core - All 2.x Versions and jQuery Core - All 1.x Versions. Don't forget to check the latest jQuery version Download the Latest jQuery Version

Prerequisites

For better understanding of jQuery, you need basic knowledge of HTML, ,CSS and javascript

Learn HTML with our interactive tutorial and live code editor

Learn HTML

Learn CSS with our interactive tutorial and live code editor

Learn CSS

Learn Javascript with our interactive tutorial and live code editor

Learn Javascript

Sources and Credits

The content and methods of this tutorial have been referred and updated with jQuery API and The jQuery Foundation

Last Updated Jul 21, 2015, 12:00:06 PM