Approaching jQuery for the first time

Learning jQuery is probably one of the most fun rides you can take!
That’s because with just some basic knowledge of jQuery you can do advanced and complex looking designs and effects, without breaking a sweat.
I’ll cover many and simple jQuery tips in my upcoming articles, for now, let’s just get a closer look at how jQuery works.
Throughout this title, I’ll assume you have a good understanding of HTML and CSS, otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend you to approach jQuery just yet.

So what is jQuery? It’s a JavaScript library, but not just an ordinary library, jQuery is an almost perfectly written one, that includes mostly everything a web developer needs to output on a page, design-wise. It simplifies javascript development through user-friendly syntaxes to create, edit and transform HTML elements to eye-catching effects, handle events, transverse through your document and even communicate to server requests.

Why is jQuery one of the most preferred and used libraries in web development?

Flexibility! It’s very easy to manipulate or create HTML elements through simple element selections and actions, as how CSS works, but obviously giving you much more control to interact with your pages.

Power! You can achieve outstanding effects and create cutting-edge designs with just a few lines of code.

Speed! I wouldn’t really outline ‘speed’ as a strong point since jQuery’s speed compared to regular JavaScript has always been put up for debate and concluding the fact that it’s slower, but I came to the conclusion that jQuery’s speed is insignificantly lower than regular JavaScript and I doubt you’ll ever need to worry about it unless you’ll start displaying 100.000+ HTML elements with it from a single page load! Point is, jQuery is fast enough considering it’s an external library.

Go ahead and visit jQuery’s official website and browse its documentation or the many user-contributed tutorials, you’ll fall in love with it, I guarantee it! 😛


You can load jQuery on to your pages by calling the library from your HEAD section:


If you’d like to see jQuery in action, visit Taking advantage of web languages basics, where I’ve written a few jQuery basic examples, or stay tuned for my upcoming articles about jQuery.

Catalin

My name is Cătălin Berța and I'm a front-end web developer. I was born in Focsani, Romania and currently living in Bucharest. Started playing with some good old html tables ever since 2004 as a hobby, turned out to be a full-time career! :) I've had the chances to experience and witness web development's rapid growth over the years where I've mainly focused on front-end web technologies.

5 thoughts on “Approaching jQuery for the first time

  1. i think it is a useful information, i think It’s very easy to manipulate or create HTML elements through simple element selections and actions

  2. I have to agree about JQuery being the most efficient scripts available. I do see in some cases it is a little slower, but not so much that it will cause concern.

    Thanks for the brief explanation that I can email to staff member.

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