How to learn JQuery (Step-by-Step) in 2021

Introduction

JQuery is a JavaScript library. It’s fast, rich, easy-to-learn, and a “write more, do less” library. With the help of JQuery, you can wrap multiple lines of code written in JS into functions that can be invoked with only one small snippet of code. It simplifies lots of complicated tasks such as DOM manipulation, event handling, animation, HTML document traversal, and AJAX. The perfectly defined and easy-to-use JQuery API works across many web browsers and makes JavaScript programming easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Moreover, JQuery has plugins that can perform almost all the tasks that would require tons of code when performed with plain JavaScript. 

Why Should You Learn JQuery?

Currently, tons of developers are on the JQuery bandwagon, and why shouldn’t they be? JQuery zeros down the cross-browser quirks, interoperability issues, and standardization issues. It creates an abstraction layer, taking care of all the workarounds. Let’s take a sneak-peek at some reasons why JQuery is so much popular even at the enterprise level.

• It Promotes Simplicity: Anyone getting into the JavaScript world finds learning JQuery very intuitive and quite easy to learn. It has a simple syntax with open coding standards that allows you to create great websites.
• It Gets Displayed Even When JS is Disabled: There can be many rendering issues if Adobe Flash is not installed on any browser. Thus, developers have to spend lots of time coding for those browsers that lack flash plugins. But with JQuery, they don’t have to do this anymore.
• It can Create Animated Applications: Just like Flash, JQuery uses a combination o, HTML, CSS, JS, and AJAX that allows you to achieve great-looking effects. Hence, you don’t have to hire a Flash developer separately.
• Pages Load Faster: The page load time, if slower, brings down your website’s performance and ranking in search engines. The best way to achieve a faster load time is to adopt coding practices that require very few code lines and can still achieve the desired result. JQuery provides you with the option to load tags only when you need them, thus improving the speed.
• It is SEO-Friendly: There are tons of plugins available that can help you optimize your JQuery snippets for search engines. You can embed all your elements using simple unordered lists, a good and healthy practice to improve SEO ranking.

Needless to say, there are tons of reasons why you should adopt JQuery in your next web development project. First, it’s free and easy to use; it reduces waiting time by pushing content to the client; it’s smaller than flash, which results in smoother playbacks. Moreover, it works anywhere, eliminating compatibility issues and has a low learning curve. Most importantly, it’s SEO-friendly and CSS compliant.

While it’s true that the use of JQuery has been declining significantly in the past, thanks to the immense popularity gained by ReactJs and AngularJs, however, it’s still considered legacy technology and preferred by many.

Prerequisites

Before you get your hands dirty with JQuery, you need to have a deeper understanding of the following topics.

• You should know and have worked with the fundamentals of CSS and HTML. You should have hands-on experience creating a simple website and understanding selectors in CSS, such as classes, ids, and pseudo-elements.
• You should also have a fundamental understanding and have worked on the basics of programming. It’s also possible to begin working with JQuery without having advanced knowledge of JavaScript. Still, it’s strongly recommended that you are familiar with fundamentals such as objects, variables, data types, etc. 
• You should also know about DOM manipulation since JQuery is mostly used to manipulate HTML DOM elements.

How to Install JQuery?

Predominantly, two ways are using which you can embed JQuery in your web pages. Please note that JQuery is nothing but a JavaScript file that you need to link with your HTML files. You can:

• Either download the JQuery library from the official web page.
• Or, you can link to the file via a CDN. A Content Delivery Network or CDN is a group of multiple servers that combine to deliver web content to users based on their geographical location. Linking to a JQuery file via CDN arrives faster and loads efficiently than hosting it on your own server.

 

Downloading a Copy of JQuery

There are two versions of the JQuery file that are available for download.

• The production version, which is used for the live websites since it is compressed and minified.
• Development version, which is predominantly used for testing and development since it is readable and uncompressed.

Please visit the JQuery website to download.

After you have downloaded it, you can reference it using the tag inside the head section in your HTML files.

Using Google CDN

You can use the Google CDN for the JQuery library by simply embedding the source inside the script tag.

Please note that you should always link to the JQuery CDN before the closing body tag, followed by the custom JavaScript files you use in your project.

IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

To get the best out of JQuery, you must use IDEs that really appreciate the true capabilities of JQuery. There are tons of IDEs that provide immense support and plugins for JQuery. But choose the right one that helps you follow the best practices for coding, prompts at errors, has auto-completion features, etc. It’s always easier to use IDEs instead of text editors because IDEs help you generate standard codes automatically. They help you with compilation. They contain useful plugins, and they allow you to import libraries seamlessly. Let’s have a look at some popular IDEs that can be used to work with JQuery files.