What is jQuery? – Definition, Features, Methods, And More

Definition jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript library created to simplify manipulation, HTML DOM tree traversal, and event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of May 2019, jQuery gets used by 73% of the 10 million most popular websites.

jQuery is a JavaScript library, by John Resig in 2006 to make it easier for developers to use JavaScript on websites. It is not a separate programming language and works in conjunction with JavaScript.

Writing code can be draining, especially when there are many strings added. jQuery brings together multiple lines of code into a single function, so there is no need to rewrite entire blocks of code to accomplish a single task.

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Important features of jQuery

One feature that explains why jQuery became so successful and popular is probably cross-platform capability. It automatically corrects the errors and runs in the same way in the most used browsers. Such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, MS Edge, IE, Android, and iOS.

jQuery also greatly facilitates the use of Ajax, it works asynchronously with the rest of the code, which means that the code written with Ajax can communicate with the server and update its content without having to reload the page.

However, there are some problems with this as different browsers execute the Ajax API differently. Therefore the code must be adapted to all browsers. It is hard and time consuming manual work. Fortunately, jQuery does all the tedious job and adapts the code to all web browsers.

Various Methods

Then there is the DOM (Document Object Model) manipulation, which can be done by various methods. In layman’s terms, it allows you to insert and remove DOM elements on an HTML page, as well as group lines more easily.

Creating animations is also more comfortable with [jQuery].

Accessing and scrolling through HTML documents, as well as performing effects and handling events, are also enhanced with [jQuery].

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