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jQuery Basics

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jQuery: History and Relevance Today

2:51 with Treasure Porth

Learn more about the past, present and future of JQuery.

jQuery became popular in the mid-2000s, when there were a number of differences 0:00
between how browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and 0:05
Safari handled DOM programming. 0:08
What worked in one browser didn't always work in another, so a lot of a JavaScript 0:11
programmer's time was spent testing and fixing code in different browsers. 0:16
This became tedious very quickly. 0:20
At the time, jQuery provided a simple tool that took care of 0:23
all of these browser differences so programmers didn't have to. 0:26
Browsers have come a long way in recent years. 0:30
Not as much work needs to be done to make sure that JavaScript 0:33
plays nice in every version of every browser. 0:36
New native methods, like querySelector and querySelectorAll, 0:39
have been added to the DOM API, making it easier to select elements. 0:43
Because of this, you may have heard some debate about whether jQuery 0:48
is still worth learning and using. 0:52
The short answer is yes. 0:54
jQuery is still everywhere. 0:56
At the time of this recording, it's still used on millions of active websites. 0:59
With this much existing code, it's unlikely to disappear anytime soon, and 1:03
the likelihood of running into jQuery at some point in your career 1:08
is still very high. 1:11
While it may no longer be worthwhile to invest large amounts of time 1:12
into becoming a jQuery expert, 1:17
it's valuable to get to know jQuery enough to build simple projects, use plugins, 1:19
maintain an existing code base, and add interactivity to webpages. 1:24
You may never use jQuery to build complex web applications, but it's still quite 1:28
useful for prototyping, or for adding features to websites and smaller projects. 1:33
It's a robust and mature library that can offer you a lot of shortcuts and 1:39
prefabricated functionality. 1:43
For example, if you wanted to include a carousel, a drag and 1:45
drop feature, light box, or loading animation to your webpage, you're going to 1:49
be able to do that in a matter of minutes with a preexisting jQuery solution. 1:53
In general, you'll find excellent documentation and a breadth of tutorials, 1:58
videos, and courses to help you accomplish pretty much anything you want to do. 2:03
This is perhaps the most compelling reason to learn jQuery, 2:08
because it was designed to make web development enjoyable, fun, and easy. 2:11
Especially if you're just learning the ropes, jQuery can be a great place to 2:16
start because it's so intuitive, allowing you to build and create quickly and with 2:20
ease, which can help you gain confidence and motivate you to keep learning. 2:25
It can free up time and mental bandwidth so you can think less about the mechanics 2:30
of the language, or the learning curve of the latest and 2:34
greatest front-end framework, and spend more time thinking about all the fun and 2:37
exciting things that you want to build. 2:41
Okay, enough talk. 2:43
Let's look at a couple of quick examples of how jQuery works and 2:45
how it differs from plain JavaScript. 2:49