Released in January of 2006, jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting. Used by over 27% of the top 10,000 most visited websites in the world, jQuery makes it easy to handle DOM objects, events, effects and AJAX, automatically takes care of JavaScript leaks, and has countless third party plugins. The purpose of this post is to give an overview of what jQuery has to offer, and why you should be using it.
AJAX
Among other advantages, one of my favorite features of jQuery is its ability to leverage AJAX with very little effort. To make an AJAX call, you just do something like this:
$.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "some.php", data: "name=John&location=Boston", success: function(msg){ alert( "Data Saved: " + msg ); } });
If you’ve developed AJAX applications before without jQuery, you’ll immediately see the value here. jQuery has put all of the properties of AJAX into one simple API. You can control everything including the url, cache, success function, data type, and even synchronization, all from one neat declaration. It’s nothing short of beautiful.
RIA Components
jQuery provides built in RIA (rich internet application) components like accordions, autocomplete text fields, buttons, date pickers, dialog boxes, progress bars, sliders, and tabs. In addition to these wonderful components, there are countless third party plugins that enhance jQuery with even more components. Before I used jQuery, I spent a large proportion of my time developing similar components with JavaScript. As a developer, having all of these wonderful components available out of the box makes development seem ten times faster.
Download & Demos
Go to www.jQuery.com to download the free library and check out some demos.