WHAT İS JQUERY AND WHAT DOES İT DO? 6 ADVANTAGES OF USİNG JQUERY

jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library that lets you write common JavaScript tasks far shorter. It came out in 2006 and, with its "write less, do more" slogan, was the web's most popular library for years. Below you will honestly find what jQuery is for, what it does, its relationship to JavaScript and Java, how it is used, and whether it is still used today.

What Is jQuery? What Does It Do?

jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library that lets you write common JavaScript tasks far shorter and more easily. It came out in 2006 and, with its slogan "write less, do more", became the web's most popular library for years.

Its main purpose is to shrink long, browser-dependent plain-JavaScript code down to a single line. Selecting and changing HTML elements, catching events like clicks, doing animations, and exchanging data with the server without a page reload (AJAX) all get shorter with jQuery. In short, jQuery is not a language that replaces JavaScript; it is a helper layer for writing JavaScript more practically. I explained the big picture of JavaScript in my JavaScript article.

What Does jQuery Do? (DOM, Events, Animation, AJAX)

jQuery's power gathers under a few main headings. To select an HTML element it uses the same CSS selectors; for example, hiding a box when a button is clicked is much shorter than in plain JavaScript. The main advantages of using jQuery are:

• Easy DOM selection: quickly select and change elements with CSS selectors.
• Event handling: simply catch click, mouse, keyboard and form events.
• Animation and effects: do effects like hide/show, slide and fade in one line.
• AJAX made easy: simplify pulling data from the server without reloading the page.
• Browser compatibility: solve old browser differences in the background (its biggest plus at launch).
• Short, readable code: "write less, do more"; do the same job with fewer lines.

When these abilities come together, jQuery became the core tool of interactive websites for years. Its ready plugin ecosystem (sliders, calendars, form validation) also sped things up; I compiled similar ready tools in my JavaScript libraries article.

The Relationship Between jQuery and JavaScript

The most confused point is this: jQuery is not a separate language. jQuery is a JavaScript library written entirely in JavaScript; that is, when you use jQuery you are still running JavaScript, just with ready, short functions.

By analogy, JavaScript is a language (say, English) and jQuery is a practical phrasebook written in that language. So you need to know the basics of JavaScript before learning jQuery; someone who skips the base and starts straight with jQuery will not understand what happens underneath, even if the code runs. The order "first JavaScript, then jQuery (if needed)" is the healthiest; MDN is a good reference for JavaScript fundamentals.

Java and JavaScript Get Confused: The Difference

The name similarity leads to a big misconception: Java and JavaScript are two completely different languages. Their relationship is about as close as "cat" and "catfish"; the names look alike, their natures differ.

Java is a separately compiled programming language used in desktop, Android and large corporate systems. JavaScript is the language that mainly runs in the web browser and adds interaction to pages. jQuery is on the JavaScript side and has nothing to do with Java. In short: Java is one language, JavaScript is another, and jQuery is a library of JavaScript. Telling these three apart early on helps a lot in job listings or courses.

How Do You Use jQuery?

To use jQuery you first need to add it to the page. The easiest way is to put a CDN link in the HTML; alternatively you can download the file locally or install it with npm. After it is added, code is usually written to run when the page is ready.

The heart of jQuery is the dollar sign: the $(selector).action() pattern. A simple code sample looks like this:

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script>
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $("#btn").click(function(){
      $("#box").slideToggle();
    });
  });
</script>

The sample above opens and closes the "box" element when the "btn" button is clicked. For official documentation and examples, jQuery's official site and W3Schools are good starting resources.

Is jQuery Still Used?

The honest answer: jQuery is still very common but no longer as central as in the old days. Today jQuery still runs on a huge share of sites on the internet (especially WordPress and older projects); that is, it is not completely dead.

That said, new, large projects are now mostly written with modern tools like React and Vue. On top of that, modern plain JavaScript (like querySelector and fetch) solves many problems jQuery solved on its own; you can check the browser support of these modern features on caniuse. So the era when jQuery was a "must-have" has passed. So what should a beginner do? Learning modern JavaScript and a framework (like React) first makes more sense today; learning jQuery is valuable for understanding and maintaining existing and old projects. For a career from scratch, the priority is modern JavaScript, not jQuery.

When Did jQuery Come Out?

jQuery was developed and announced in 2006 by John Resig. At the time, each browser interpreting JavaScript a bit differently was a big headache; jQuery solved those differences in the background, fundamentally easing developers' work, and quickly became the standard.

Over the years browsers standardized and JavaScript itself grew stronger; so most of the problems jQuery solved naturally shrank. The library is still developed today and current versions are released, but it handed its throne at the center of web development to modern frameworks. Historically, jQuery played a very important role in shaping the modern web; for those who want to learn, it is a valuable piece of web history.