Welcome to jQuery

WELCOME TO jQUERY

jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries in use today because it lets you build JavaScript Web pages and Web applications quickly and easily, accomplishing in a single line of code something that would have required dozens of lines of JavaScript code.

Grab yourself a computer and the handful of tools outlined below, and then dig into the following six chapters.

jQUERY

jQuery, which is free to download and use, comes in the form of a single.js file that you link to from your Web page, and your code accesses the library by calling various jQuery functions. Go to jquery.com and download the jQuery library.

jQUERY UI

Next, you’ll want to download the jQuery UI library from jQueryUI.com. This will equip you with some core interaction plugins as well as many UI widgets that I’ll discuss later in the book.

TEXT EDITOR

You’ll be doing some scripting, so get yourself a good text editor. Windows users typically opt for Microsoft Notepad or Notepad++, while Mac users often rely on BBEdit from Bare Bones Software.

BROWSER

Chances are you’ve already got a standards-compliant browser installed. Popular options are the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera.

TROUBLESHOOTER

I rely heavily on the Firebug Web development tool for troubleshooting. Go to http://getfirebug.com and get a version that’s specific to your browser. It’s 100% free and open source, and you’ll be grateful you’ve got it installed when something goes wrong.

TESTING ENVIRONMENT

Rather than using an actual hosted Web site to test your jQuery creations, use a testing environment that’s local on your own computer. I use XAMPP, which you can download from http://apachefriends.org.