Posted January 1, 2013on:
Let`s start from the brief history of the two.
– Sending HTML page data to server using AJAX;
– Animating HTML element;
– Validating the HTML form;
– Storing user information that may help for Web Analytic, Ad tracking etc.
Mostly jQuery focuses on designers and inexperienced developers, still it could be of interest to experienced programmers as well. Here I will try to enumerate the reasons why:
1) Element’s selecting. Every jQuery operation starts from selecting one or more nodes from the DOM. jQuery’s selection syntax is an interesting hybrid of CSS 1, 2, bits of CSS 3, some XPath and a few custom extensions as well.
3) The $ function. You could say it is not true that that jQuery introduces only one object in the global namespace as there is also a $: the $ symbol is also set up as a shortcut for jQuery. This makes enough gently: if you want to back your former function $ (for example, if you have a piece of code based on Prototype), you can call jQuery.noConflict (), to return to his old the $. At the beginning you could considere the widespread using $ in jQuery is no more than a clever trick. But for some reason thinking of it in terms of the jQuery symbol makes everything seem a lot more sensible
5) Manipulating with DOM. jQuery offers a few smart ways of making large scale manipulations to the DOM. The first is quite surprising: the jQuery function can take a snippet of HTML which it will turn in to a DOM element.
6) The returned beast. Object, which is returned by the selectors jQuery, could be quite interesting. It represents a set of DOM-elements and behaves a bit like an array—it has a length property, items can be accessed by index and (most importantly) Firebug treats it as an array when displaying it in the interactive console. This is a clever illusion; the collection is actually a jQuery object, incorporating a large number of methods which can be used to query, modify and extend the collection of selected elements.
There are three principle categories of jQuery methods: those that manipulate all of the matched elements, those that return a value from the first matched object, and those that modify the selection itself. If you have Firebug you can try these out interactively: use this Insert jQuery bookmarklet first to load the jQuery library in to any page, then paste the code examples in to the Firebug console. I would like to note a convenient symmetry of these methods: they are used for display attributes (taking 2 arguments passed to or from a number of properties of the object), and to read the values of these attributes (if only one argument). This symmetry is used throughout jQuery, which greatly facilitates the storage API.
8) jQuery and Ajax. jQuery has the best API for working with Ajax. The most simple form of an Ajax call looks like jQuery(‘div#intro’).load(‘/some/fragment.html’). This performs a GET request against /some/fragment.html and populates div#intro with the returned HTML fragment. It’s a neat shortcut, but what if you want to do something more advanced like display an Ajax loading indicator? jQuery exposes custom events (ajaxStart, ajaxComplete, ajaxError and more) for you to hook in this kind of code.
9) Extensions. Considering the whole set of features as standard, it is worth noting that uzhaty jQuery version is only 20 KB, and even less if you use archive (. Gz). Additional functionality that extends beyond this delivery can be arranged with the help of extensions that can (and do) to add new methods to an existing jQuery. If you want, you can do something like this: jQuery (‘p’). bounceAroundTheScreenAndTurnGreen(); The extension mechanism in jQuery provides documented methods for adding them to the system. Simplicity and ease of use have attracted a large community of authors such extensions, the extensions directory has more than a hundred examples. Another nice feature is the ability to add your own selectors as well as their own methods. MoreSelectors expansion adds methods like div: color (red), which, for example, selects all div with red text.
10) Several words about leaky abstractions. When studying jQuery with more respect, you could struggle with one philosophical blocker. In certain cases, jQuery uses a truly unique methods to achieve a particular function: some parts (such as source code selectors) of this library look scary. If you do so , it requires an understanding of how the library works. To understand this, you need to know some basic concepts, the differences between browsers and a set of methods, which the library uses to get around them. No library can protect you 100% against weird browser behaviour, but as long as you have a grounding in the underlying theory you should be able to figure out if a problem stems from your own code, your library or the underlying implementation.