“Why on Earth would I need to use jQuery?”, a young inexperienced programmer would ask. A proficient developer would already be experienced enough to say that jQuery is a turning point of modern web programming that has significantly simplified and accelerated client-side scripting of HTML. However, if you’re nothing but an average Internet user, you would be happy to know that for the last couple of years the majority of websites and social media have adopted jQuery for making web page updates as fast and ergonomic as possible, which is why you can now see your Facebook friend’s reply almost the same second it has been sent.

jQuery is a popular free cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify front-end development and which by now is actively used on almost 700,000 websites with the highest traffic rates on the web. Its extensive use is related primarily to a wide support of various browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE 9 (or higher). Apart from that, jQuery provides an easy access to the DOM programming interface allowing for a massive element selection (using the Sizzle cross-platform CSS selector) and manipulation based on its elements’ names and attributes. It’s also convenient for creating AJAX-based web applications and elements with specialized visual effects and animation.

And this is by far the least you can learn to do with jQuery. So if you feel like going deeper into the library and interactive programming in general, feel free to choose one or more books from our list of the best jQuery books you may find on the web. Continue Reading