jQuery has been kind of a buzz word in the last 2 years. This technology started really small but it is now endorsed by a lot of major web players, have a complete development team of more than 10 talented developers, and there is currently 3 or 4 conferences a year organized by the team on the sole purpose of talking about it with other web developers. It is a technology we use heavily at w.illi.am/. If for you jQuery only rings in your head with some kind of AJAX, well read this out and the next time you ask you your developers team about jQuery they might not look at you with round big eyes and say « yes… yes… »
The jQuery mojo is write less do more, and this is exactly what it’s meant to do. This is an API that help you write better javascript. Unfortunately it is really hard to write good javascript on all browsers. What jQuery does is take your jQuery code and dispatch it to every browser in the more efficient way possible. This enables developers to write faster and better javascript. It adds some functionalities too, like for example animations.
Not unlike Adobe Flash, with jQuery it is possible to animate objects on your web page, this is however limited. While you can do easing and opacity effects, you cannot rotate or use « photoshop effect » directly from javascript. Well used, you can create nice and clean animation with jQuery, but trying too hard might result in a look that feel like flash but not really as good as flash.
The famous AJAX
This is a common error for non-tech teams to actually refer jQuery as AJAX, in fact this is only a subset of functionality of javascript and not javascript itself. AJAX refers to asynchronous JavaScript and XML, what it means is that you can load external XML or HTML to and from your page. For example, a form on the web normally sends you to another page when submitting it. Using AJAX, you could submit the form to your server in javascript using AJAX without quitting the page. Most recent websites make a major use of AJAX without the user noticing it to update content or save users preference.
Using it without an API like jQuery is pretty hard because of it’s weird syntax. This is somewhere jQuery really shines, because it enable you to do a lot, without wanting to bang your head on the wall. Because of javascript API like jQuery, using AJAX has been made a lot more easier and also popular, this might have to do with why people often call jQuery as an AJAX technology.
If you want more information on jQuery I would suggest you visit the official website. There is a lot of information on the website and looking at the documentation might help you understand how jQuery can be beneficial for your website or company.
