ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

The $ Method and $(document).ready()

The heart of jQuery lies is a single method called jQuery(). To make things easier for developers, the same method can be called by using the $ character. The dollar-sign is a valid character in JavaScript, so it alone can be used as a method name.

The $() method is used to select objects in your web page. In general, it is similar to the JavaScript method getElementById, except it’s much more flexible. We cover selectors in detail in the next section, but for now, understand that the $() method is used in every jQuery method.

The $(document).ready() call that we used in the previous example is your first example of a jQuery event. jQuery events are similar to ASP.NET events because they fire at certain