jQuery Is My Favorite New Tool In The Toolbox

Last weekend I attended BeaverBarCamp and had a great time.  This year I gave my first BarCamp talk/session called jQuery 101.  Surprisingly, the session was packed!  I should have upgraded from a "medium" room to a "large" room.  People were sitting on the floor…now that's dedication!

It was meant to introduce people to jQuery and get them interested.  The talk demo and "slides" are on the ProWorks server here: BeaverBarCamp Session Talk - jQuery 101.

jQuery has made developing JavaScript fun for me.  It handles all of the cross-browser, cross-platform issues that we're so painful in traditional JavaScript.  Plus, it supports my desire to separate mark-up, presentation, and behavior.

My favorite features?

* Selectors: I love using CSS to select my DOM objects.  It keeps everything talking the same language and just feels natural.

* On load event: Its not so much about the onload event, but that it allows me to put all of my jQuery initialization code in a separate .js file which then contains my behavior.  Just like my CSS I want to keep my JS separate.

* Effects: I love the cool animations I can do with jQuery.  Things I could only do in Flash (maybe) I now can do in jQuery.  My favorite effects are the jQuery Easing Plugin effects.

* Plug-ins: I love that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I need some crazy functionality.  The fact that there is a thriving plug-in community adds tons of value to the library.