jQuery - A Library.

I've been experimenting with jQuery, a JavaScript library, lately. And, with one exception, I've been quite impressed by it's elegance and simplicity.

It took me a while to come to terms with the concept that using any JavaScript library might be acceptable. Libraries and frameworks do have costs - there's the user downloaded file size, and your ability to grok the new system to consider. Writing the code from scratch so that I completely grokked it allowed me to polish, support and extend it. But certain web pages absolutely had to have that special bling-a-ding-ding. Coding many of those special effects (fading, animations, shrinking) is way beyond my skill level. Why not leverage existing technology that's been developed, vetted and browser tested by experts?

I investigated a couple of different JavaScript libraries before selecting jQuery as the one to learn. But jQuery provided a wealth of documentation, a variety of features, and suitable browser support. When I started working with jQuery, it was dead simple to learn. And I'm most impressed that jQuery can access any elements I can identify with CSS - this allows me to add JavaScript functionality in a non-obtrusive manner; generally without changing my markup at all.

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Tags: javascript jquery