jQuery Part 2: Why use it?
I got quite a few questions about why you want to use jQuery after the article I ran yesterday about the editease plugin for jQuery. I thought I should address those here in part two and explain why you’d want to use it.
Recapping, what is jQuery?
jQuery is a javascript framework that allows you to develop plugins with, essentially cool and useful effects. Naturally you can just download any of the vast amount of plugins that are available and use on your site, which brings us to another advantage. A lot of the code don’t need to be rewritten again and again in the scripts, because that’s in the framwork. So in essence, it’s a great way to style up your site using javascript effects.
Why should I use it then?
Well as I’ve said, it does allow you to add creative effects through javascript but not only creative and good looking effects. You can also add useful boxes, form validations, site editing (like I talked about yesterday), really simply through the plugins of a framework. If you’re a developer you can of course write your own functions much simpler than it would be if you were to write everything from dead scratch. This is something every user benefits from in the case that you don’t need to load a ton of scripts onto a website that are writing the same base code all over, which brings us onto another important thing. The whole framework itself is really lightweight.You are not really adding a lot of page weight with the framework.
Another big pro of using a popular framework is the wide range of plugins available. jQuery is a very big framework and has a super plugin repositry, where you can find a whole whole lot. If you are looking for AJAX effects, you’ll find it. If you happen to be looking at basic content management, you’ll find that too.
Now, there are other javascript frameworks out there such as Prototype and Mootools. It’s a lot of a personal thing. I’m a jQuery guy and I like how it’s built and therefore I use it.
Thursday Dailies
- Adobe has announced that they are going to have a screencast showcasing the upcoming Creative Suite 4 on the 23rd September. It’s a free signup so Signup Now!
- If you’re like me and like WordPress and install it for a lot of clients, you will be interesting in this article over at WP-Candy on Five Ways to Familiarize Clients with WordPress. It might be a pretty simple content management system but can look very daunting at a first look. The ideas are really good and will work for anyone who install WordPress for clients.
- I’ve you’re at Photoshop World right now in Las Vegas, you are probably right in the opening keynote and viewing something cool. Hopefully all of us who can’t be there will hear about some of the cool things really soon and as soon as I do, I’ll post the stuff right up here.
- Yesterday when I posted about my ten favorites iPhone apps and I wrote about some bugs in Homeworkr. Now after I get an email from the creator of the app asking about the bugs so that he could fix them. I just wanted to acknowledge that they are keen on hearing from you if you have any bugs or feature requests for the app.
That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be able to post up some Photoshop World news later.
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