What Is jQuery Used For?

jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library. It is lightweight and helps when we have to write less and do more.

jQuery is used to take a bunch of common tasks that require many lines of JavaScript code and wraps them into various methods. This method can be called with a single line of code. Thus making it easy to use JavaScript on your website. Explaining the difference between Javascript and jQuery, Skillcrush says, " JavaScript is a standalone programming language, while jQuery is a collection of JavaScript code (not its own language) ".

" JQuery is a fast, small JavaScript library included in a single .js file. It provides many built-in functions using which you can accomplish various tasks easily and quickly. ", says EduCBA.

Why jQuery?

jQuery is a concise cross-browser, fast, small, and feature-rich library. Although there are a lot of JavaScript libraries out there, jQuery is the most popular and widely used framework by the developers. It is more flexible and easy to use as compared to other JavaScript libraries.

jQuery requires much less code, has a wide range of plugins all over the internet, and easy to implement for web developers. It works in all browsers, makes web pages more interactive, simple, and user-friendly. Also, it can be optimized in terms of SEO and it is easy to run and use.

What Does jQuery Do?

jQuery is a framework built with JavaScript. It helps web developers to add extra functionalities to their websites. It is the most popular JavaScript library used to traverse and manipulate the HTML DOM tree. Also, it simplifies event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax.

It is much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers. It makes your web pages more interactive, simple and enhances user experience. It provides you several visual functions such as ease-in, ease-out effects which make it one of the most preferred choices for web designers.

jQuery is used to connect with HTML elements in the browser via the DOM. You can add jQuery to your HTML and start using it either by downloading the jQuery library from jQuery.com or by including jQuery from a CDN. With the help of jQuery, you select (query) HTML elements and perform various actions on them.

Syntax:

$(selector).action()

Here “$” is used to define/ access jQuery, “selector” is used to find elements, and the “action” is used to perform an action on these elements.

Let's see a simple example to add a button and adding back-ground color to it in your HTML code using jQuery.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <script 
    src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"> 
    </script>
    <script>
    $(document).ready(function(){
    $("button").click(function(){
    alert("Background color = " + $("button").css("background-color"));
    });
    });
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>

  <h2>jQuery Example</h2>
  <button style="background-color:red">Submit</button>

  </body>
</html>

Output:

Why Developers Prefer To Use jQuery?

It is observed that most of the web developers prefer to
use jQuery for developing their website. This is because jQuery helps to
simplify and standardize interactions between JavaScript code and HTML
elements. It helps developers to create interactive and dynamic websites. It
also let’s the developer to develop Ajax
templates with ease.

jQuery is a powerful tool which will never have a shortage of resources and you will always find whatever you need. Also it promotes simplicity and compatibility. It has clean and beautiful code and is easy with simple syntax, open source libraries, animations and amazing effects. It is highly extensive, provides faster page load and SEO-friendly which makes it most widely used by the web designers.

Now let's see a program code to append a text in html using jQuery.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("#btn1").click(function(){
    $("p").append(" <b>Appended text</b>.");
  });

});
</script>
</head>
<body>

<p>Simple Text.</p>
<button id="btn1">Append text</button>
</body>
</html>

Output:

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we discussed why is jQuery used for and why do developers prefer it. We learned how jQuery is an in-built library that can be very easy to use for developers and increase their coding efficiency.

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To learn more about jQuery find(), visit our previous article!

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