Pro jQuery

C H A P T E R  1

Putting jQuery in Context

At its heart, jQuery does something that sounds pretty dull: it lets you modify the contents of HTML documents by manipulating the model that the browser creates when it processes the HTML (known as DOM manipulation, as I'll explain later). If you are reading this, you have probably already done some DOM manipulation, either using another JavaScript library or even using the built-in API that most modern web browsers support, and you have picked up this book because you want to do it in a better way.

jQuery goes beyond better. It makes DOM manipulation a pleasure and, on occasion, an actual joy. There is something so elegant and graceful about the way that jQuery works that transforms a task that can ...