What Is jQuery? Why Use jQuery in Website Design

Anyone who studies or works in information technology knows that the front end uses a lot of effects and talks to the server through JavaScript. Doing this takes a lot of JavaScript code. To cut that down as much as possible while still meeting the requirements for programming languages, and because JavaScript is usually developed in the form of libraries, a library is a collection of the most commonly used functions, packed into a single function or object. This is also why jQuery.

jQuery plays an important role in simplifying JavaScript code in programming end-to-end website design. So what is jQuery, and why do we need it? To answer those questions, let's us find out in this article.

What is jQuery?

You can think of jQuery as a library built entirely from Javascript, mainly to help programmers build JavaScript functions and use them more easily. jQuery now includes many modules, from effects to selector queries. That is why few people are unfamiliar with it: it is used on almost all website in the world today (except a few websites that use JS Framework).

History of jQuery

jQuery was officially released in January 2006 by its creator John Resig at BarCamp NYC. It is still maintained today and keeps growing thanks to a team of software developers, led by Timmy Wilson. jQuery is increasingly widely used, especially on well-known websites.

Main modules of jQuery

jQuery has the following main modules:

• Ajax: handles Ajax
• Attributes: helps handle the attributes of HTML elements
• Effects: handles effects
• Events: handles events
• Form module: handles form-related events
• DOM: handles the Document Object Model
• Selector: helps you move between HTML elements

Key features of jQuery

Features of jQuery attract a lot of interest. jQuery works as a JavaScript toolkit designed to simplify many tasks by writing less code. It has several important features:

• DOM manipulation : jQuery makes it easy to select DOM elements to traverse, much like using CSS. It also has features for editing their content using the Selector engine, an open-source engine called Sizzle.
• Event handling : Besides DOM manipulation, jQuery improves interaction with users by handling many kinds of events without cluttering the HTML code with event handlers.
• AJAX support : jQuery lets you build feature-rich, responsive sites by using AJAX.
• Animation effects : jQuery usually comes with eye-catching animation effects that you can use directly on your own web pages.
• Lightweight : jQuery is known as a lightweight library of around 19KB.

Because it is supported by most modern browsers, jQuery also works well on IE 6.0+, FF 2.0+, Safari 3.0+, Chrome, Cốc Cốc and Opera 9.0+. These features make it much easier to understand what jQuery is.

How to use jQuery

There are two basic ways to use jQuery:

• Install it locally: You can download the jQuery library to your computer and include it in your HTML code.
• Load it through a CDN: This loads the jQuery library into your HTML code directly from a Content Delivery Network.

What are the advantages of jQuery?

According to experts, jQuery has these notable strengths:

• It processes code quickly and can be extended.
• It lets you write complete functionality in as few lines as possible.
• It helps improve web programming performance.
• It supports building applications that are compatible across browsers.
• jQuery uses the newest features of the browser.
• It cuts development time through its large community and rich library of plugins.
• It makes it easy to write code for UI-related functions, which keeps the amount of code to a minimum.

Why use jQuery?

There are many JavaScript frameworks out there, but jQuery appears to be the most popular and also the most extensible. Many well-known companies on the web use jQuery, for example:

• Google
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Netflix

jQuery promotes simplicity

Developers find jQuery intuitive and easy to learn. The library is built on shorter, generally simpler code structures. With open coding standards and simpler syntax, developers can save time when building an application or website.

Developers also do not have to be programming or web design experts to give their sites a polished look. Anyone who has spent hours writing and testing CSS files will appreciate how simple jQuery makes it. There is also a powerful set of jQuery UI components that developers can plug into their sites.

jQuery elements display even when JavaScript is turned off

If Adobe Flash is not installed in a browser, certain parts of a page may display incorrectly, if they display at all. This is bound to annoy users. It forces developers to spend extra time writing code for browsers without the Flash plugin, which adds to development time.

With jQuery it is different. Manipulating the HTML DOM has become the most widely accepted way to run a web page, so the content still displays even if you turn off JavaScript in the browser. Because the HTML DOM is always present, you no longer need to worry about browser settings. Developing with jQuery also reduces the number of cases that need a help table.

jQuery integrates easily with the Visual Studio IDE

NuGet is an extension for Visual Studio that makes it easy to add, remove and update libraries and tools in all Visual Studio projects that use the .NET Framework. NuGet has existed for several years and is a trusted source for developers to share and develop Microsoft Visual Studio packages.

Visual Studio 2010 integrates with the jQuery library through the Manage NuGet Packages dialog. This enables Visual Studio's IntelliSense, so developers can instantly access jQuery methods and syntax without leaving the code editor to look things up. There is no better tool for working in Microsoft's .NET environment.

Most developers .NET use Visual Studio and are already familiar with NuGet. This is also why jQuery is popular and keeps growing among .NET developers. With the addition of jQuery Mobile for Windows, you can now have the full benefits of the jQuery library on the Windows Phone platform.

As can be seen, Microsoft is serious about HTML5, which includes many jQuery elements, by promoting the use of jQuery that most HTML5 have adopted. Microsoft encourages and supports the use of jQuery, not only in mobile phone development but also in new-style Metro user interface applications.

Conclusion:

So, from this article we now have a better idea of jQuery is and why we need to use it, especially for running a website. Overall, jQuery is a fast, small but powerful, feature-rich library that simplifies client-side scripting of HTML. Interacting with HTML through JavaScript used to be hard work, requiring long, tangled and cumbersome code. Thanks to jQuery, interaction became much easier and takes less time.

In practice, however, many people say jQuery is fading, especially now that browsers are getting better and projects are more complex, so jQuery no longer seems to fit. Some jQuery features are no longer needed if you switch to a JS framework. Still, it is useful and important knowledge that you need to sharpen your programming skills.