jQuery Introduction | Overview | jQuery Basics

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Prerequisites for Learning jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript library, so you need basic knowledge of the JavaScript language. It is also closely related to HTML and CSS, such as selecting HTML elements and changing CSS styles.

Therefore, before learning jQuery, you need the following basic knowledge.

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

What Is jQuery?

jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library.

jQuery makes it easier to use JavaScript on websites. With jQuery, you can apply a variety of effects and interactions to web pages with short, simple code. For that reason, jQuery is one of the many popular JavaScript libraries.

History of jQuery

jQuery was first introduced in 2006 by John Resig at BarCamp NYC. Today, a developer group called the jQuery Team is responsible for development and maintenance through the jQuery Foundation.

Advantages of jQuery

JavaScript libraries currently used widely include the following.

  • Prototype
  • Dojo
  • GWT (Google Web Toolkit)
  • MochiKit

Among these many JavaScript libraries, jQuery is especially widely used for the following reasons.

  1. jQuery is supported by most browsers, including older versions of major web browsers.
  2. It makes HTML DOM manipulation easy and CSS styles simple to apply.
  3. It makes animation effects and interactive handling easy to apply.
  4. It lets you implement the same behavior with shorter code.
  5. It has many plugins and plenty of reference documentation.
  6. It uses an open license, so anyone can use it freely.

jQuery Versions

jQuery version development and maintenance are carried out through the jQuery Foundation.

The latest versions for each jQuery release line are as follows.

  1. Version 1: jQuery 1.12.4
  2. Version 2: jQuery 2.2.4
  3. Version 3: jQuery 3.3.1

jQuery version 1 supports operation in Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8. jQuery version 2 dropped support for Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, which were supported by version 1.

jQuery version 3, released in October 2014, is the next-generation standard for jQuery. jQuery version 3 was changed to be more concise and faster while maintaining compatibility with earlier versions. In September 2016, version 3.1.1, the latest version of jQuery version 3 at the time, was released.

For more details about the latest jQuery version, see the following link.

http://blog.jquery.com

jQuery versions 2 and 3 both work only in Internet Explorer 9 or later. For this reason, many websites still use jQuery version 1.