jQuery Introduction
The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.
What You Should Already Know
Before you start studying jQuery, you should have a basic knowledge of:
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
What is jQuery?
jQuery is a lightweight, "write less, do more", JavaScript library.
The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.
jQuery takes a lot of common tasks
that require many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and
wraps them into methods
that you can call with a single line of code.
jQuery also simplifies a lot of the complicated things from JavaScript,
like AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.
The jQuery library contains the following features:
HTML/DOM manipulation
CSS manipulation
HTML event methods
Effects and animations
AJAX
Utilities
Tip: In addition, jQuery has plugins for almost any task out there.
Why jQuery?
There are lots of other JavaScript libraries out there,
but jQuery is probably the most popular, and also the most extendable.
Many of the biggest companies on the Web use jQuery, such as:
Google Microsoft IBM Netflix
Adding jQuery to Your Web Pages
There are several ways to start using jQuery on your web site. You can:
Download the jQuery library from jQuery.com
Include jQuery from a CDN, like Google
Note : A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers that deliver
web content to users based on their geographic location.
Downloading jQuery
There are two versions of jQuery available for downloading:
Production version - this is for your live website because it has been minified and compressed
Development version - this is for testing and development (uncompressed and readable code)
Both versions can be downloaded from jQuery.com.
The jQuery library is a single JavaScript file, and you reference it with the HTML <script> tag
(notice that the <script> tag should be inside the <head> section):
<head>
<script src="jquery-3.7.1.min.js"></script>
</head>
Tip: Place the downloaded file in the same directory as the pages where you wish to use it.
jQuery CDN
If you don't want to download and host jQuery yourself, you can include it from a CDN (Content
Delivery Network).
Google is an example of someone who host jQuery:
Google CDN:
<head>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
</head>
Example : hide the paragraph
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$("button").click(function(){
$("p").hide();
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h2>This is a heading</h2>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>
<button>Click me</button>
</body>
</html>
This is a heading
This is a paragraph.
This is another paragraph.
Click me
If Click me button paragraphs are hide. So, Heading lines is displayed
This is a heading
One big advantage of using the hosted jQuery from Google:
Many users already have downloaded jQuery from Google when visiting another site. As a
result, it will be loaded from cache when they visit your site, which leads to faster loading time.
Also, most CDN's will make sure that once a user requests a file from it, it will be served from the
server closest to them, which also leads to faster loading time.
jQuery Syntax
With jQuery you select (query) HTML elements and perform "actions" on them.
jQuery Syntax
The jQuery syntax is tailor-made for selecting HTML elements and performing some action on the
element(s).
Basic syntax is: $(selector).action()
A $ sign to define/access jQuery
A (selector) to "query (or find)" HTML elements
A jQuery action() to be performed on the element(s)
Examples:
$(this).hide() - hides the current element.
$("p").hide() - hides all <p> elements.
$(".test").hide() - hides all elements with class="test".
$("#test").hide() - hides the element with id="test".
The Document Ready Event
You might have noticed that all jQuery methods in our examples, are inside a document ready
event:
$(document).ready(function(){
// jQuery methods go here...
});
This is to prevent any jQuery code from running before the document is finished loading (is
ready).
It is good practice to wait for the document to be fully loaded and ready before working with it.
This also allows you to have your JavaScript code before the body of your document, in the head
section.
Here are some examples of actions that can fail if methods are run before the document is fully
loaded:
Trying to hide an element that is not created yet
Trying to get the size of an image that is not loaded yet
Tip: The jQuery team has also created an even shorter method for the document ready event:
$(function(){
// jQuery methods go here...
});
Use the syntax you prefer. We think that the document ready event is easier to understand when
reading the code.
