jQuery

jQuery is a fast, small, cross-platform and feature-rich JavaScript library. It is designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, animation, event handling, and AJAX very simple with an easy-to-use API that works on a lot of different type of browsers.

The main purpose of jQuery is to provide an easy way to use JavaScript on your website to make it more interactive and attractive. It is also used to add animation.

What is jQuery

jQuery is a small, light-weight and fast JavaScript library. It is cross-platform and supports different types of browsers. It is also referred as ?write less do more? because it takes a lot of common tasks that requires many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and binds them into methods that can be called with a single line of code whenever needed. It is also very useful to simplify a lot of the complicated things from JavaScript, like AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.

• jQuery is a small, fast and lightweight JavaScript library.
• jQuery is platform-independent.
• jQuery means "write less do more".
• jQuery simplifies AJAX call and DOM manipulation.

jQuery Features

Following are the important features of jQuery.

• HTML manipulation
• DOM manipulation
• DOM element selection
• CSS manipulation
• Effects and Animations
• Utilities
• AJAX
• HTML event methods
• JSON Parsing
• Extensibility through plug-ins

Why jQuery is required

Sometimes, a question can arise that what is the need of jQuery or what difference it makes on bringing jQuery instead of AJAX/ JavaScript? If jQuery is the replacement of AJAX and JavaScript? For all these questions, you can state the following answers.

• It is very fast and extensible.
• It facilitates the users to write UI related function codes in minimum possible lines.
• It improves the performance of an application.
• Browser's compatible web applications can be developed.
• It uses mostly new features of new browsers.

So, you can say that out of the lot of JavaScript frameworks, jQuery is the most popular and the most extendable. Many of the biggest companies on the web use jQuery.

Some of these companies are:

• Microsoft
• Google
• IBM
• Netflix

What should you know before starting to learn jQuery?

It is always advised to a fresher to learn the basics of web designing before starting to learn jQuery. He should learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript first. But, if you belong to a technical background, it is up to you.

If you are a fresher and want to study these subjects first.