jQuery
New Wave Javascript

jQuery is a new type of Javascript library. It is not a huge, bloated, framework promising the best in AJAX - nor is just a set of needlessly complex enhancements - jQuery is designed to change the way that you write Javascript.

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a Javascript library that takes this motto to heart: Writing Javascript code should be fun. jQuery acheives this goal by taking common, repetitive, tasks, stripping out all the unnecessary markup, and leaving them short, smart and understandable.

What does jQuery code look like? The quick and dirty:

$("p.surprise").addClass("ohmy").show("slow");

Congratulations! You just ran a snippet of jQuery code - wasn't that easy? There's lots of example code throughout the documentation , on this site - be sure to give all the code a test run, to see what happens.

The above code snippet looks for all paragraphs that have a class of 'surprise', adds the class 'ohmy' to them, then slowly reveals them. Click the 'Run' button to see it in action!

Quick Facts:

• jQuery supports CSS 1-3 and basic XPath.
• jQuery is about 10kb in size.
• jQuery works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.