Web Development with jQuery

Chapter 1Introduction to jQuery

JavaScript frameworks have arisen as necessary and useful companions for client-side web development. Just a few years ago, JavaScript frameworks were needed to pave over the many inconsistencies present with cross-platform web development. Before Microsoft got its act together and gave us IE with vastly improved standards support, there was more often than not the IE way and the standard way. Frameworks like jQuery helped immensely to fill in the holes between standard and nonstandard. Today jQuery is a phenomenally popular, leading JavaScript framework and application development platform. It is leaner; it is faster loading; and it comes loaded with features that make the life of a JavaScript application developer much easier. No longer is JavaScript an afterthought, grafted onto stateless HTML. It is used more and more to be the foundation and the primary driving force of not only web development but also application development, from desktop to tablets and smartphones.

Thanks to renewed vigor in the browser and platform wars of the big tech giants, JavaScript has also become much leaner and faster. Today, the leading browser makers are delivering JavaScript capabilities that take the good ole reliable, interpreted language of JavaScript and instantly transform it into cached machine byte code that can be executed blazingly fast. Because of the collective advances and one-upmanship of Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft, today we have JavaScript ...