jQuery comes with code you can easily reuse to add interaction to your site, which saves you time because you don’t need to implement the functionality yourself. Instead of writing code for boilerplate functionalities, you can simply call a jQuery method with one line of code.
Unlike some other JS libraries such as React.js, jQuery is not that big; all the code is in a single long JavaScript file.
What Are jQuery’s Key Features?
- Effects and Animations
- Ajax
- CSS Support
- Versatile Utilities
- Extensions and Open-Source Community
jQuery vs. JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language while jQuery is a library that consists of JavaScript code. The jQuery code library comes with ready-made JavaScript code implementations, which you can use to build websites more quickly.
Why Use jQuery?
jQuery helps developers add useful functionality and interaction to a website. The framework comes with functionality that lets you modify the document object model (DOM) tree of a web page. The library makes event handling easier because it also allows for improved CSS animations and operability. What’s more, jQuery works well with Ajax.
Some of the notable pre-built functions in jQuery include ease-in and ease-out animations. Typically, you’d need to code these features but thanks to jQuery, you only need to call the pre-built functions.
Using jQuery can give a web page a nice facelift while the additional interaction, animations and smooth flow improves the user experience.
Benefits of Using jQuery
jQuery has become a popular framework thanks to the versatile functionality it offers. The most useful features of jQuery include:
Effects and Animations
In jQuery, there are many pre-built effects and animations you can simply call to use. For example, you can add shadows or text swoop-ins. You can also introduce parallax effects for scrolling pages to make them look more interesting.
Ajax
You can use jQuery to easily access external data with the built-in Ajax features. Note that Ajax is not that relevant anymore and chances are you won’t use it that much but if you need to load data access using JavaScript, then Ajax and jQuery’s Ajax features will help.
CSS support
CSS, which stylizes your website, works well with jQuery. CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and HTML form a strong combination that’s easy to manage so you can build interactive and user-friendly websites.
Versatile Utilities
jQuery comes with built-in utilities that make JavaScript management easier. For instance, you can use the browser utility to access the browser version in your code.
Extensions and Open-Source Community
jQuery is just a file full of JavaScript code, which means you can write extensions to it. If you can’t do it alone, you have a large community of jQuery users that do. You can explore tutorials and GitHub repositories that add useful extensions to your jQuery routine.
