Professional jQuery

Chapter 1

Getting Started

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• What jQuery is Good At
• The jQuery “Hello World” Code Conventions and Development Tools

You probably spend more time in front of a computer than with your significant other. Hence, having a nice comfortable seat, a fast computer, and software that accelerates development is essential.

Starting with the basics, we’ll review requirements, different ways to obtain jQuery, and how to run it on both client and server, and set up some conventions for the rest of the book, using Google’s JavaScript standards.

In this chapter you set up your work environment for developing and debugging jQuery and JavaScript code. A major portion of development time goes into debugging, so a good debugger isn’t really an option. After reviewing Firebug, Chrome, and IE debuggers a portion of this chapter covers debugging JSON, tools for inspecting HTTP headers, and the JSLint code quality tool.

You learn to package your .js files for production use, explore tools, and establish some coding conventions.

WHAT JQUERY IS GOOD AT

Without a doubt, one of the strong points of using jQuery is how it diminishes many cross-browser concerns. Without it, writing cross-browser-compatible JavaScript code is a tedious, and unnecessary, exercise. It’s difficult not to marvel at how much time is saved getting things running in both IE and Firefox with jQuery. The core is also excellent at traversing the DOM tree and selecting elements. It’s also very lightweight, with ...