Write Less , Do More...

Countless number of times I have indicated in my lectures that without Javascript knowledge, you are not a web developer. Similar to HTML which doesn't has any replacement, JavaScript has also become "THE" choice for programmers across all technological platforms like J2EE, LAMP & .NET etc.

To make the life of developers easy there are many JavaScript frameworks. To name a few: Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Dojo, QooxDoo (still remember the struggles that our team had @ merc with this) etc. 

Surely jQuery is not simply yet another JavaScript framework. jQuery fully satisfies its tagline "write less, do more" (thats what most of us want, right ?) .

jQuery is distinct, powerful and cool with the following features:

• Open source
• Light weight (only ~68 kb)
• Extensibility through plug-ins (so you need not to be a Javascript pro to use it; can simply copy & paste the code... afterall "reusability" is the most important software enginnering principle :) LOL )
• Greater support for cool user-interfaces  (sliding, fading etc).
• With a simple inclusion of a file you can start working directly
• Simplified event handling
• Easy way to navigate DOM 
• Ability to select multiple items satisfying a particular condition.

Though there exist many tutorials on-line, I would prefer the one @ roseindia: 

http://www.roseindia.net/ajax/jquery/

Btw, 

Qn  : Why the name jQuery? 

Ans : "j" stands for "javascript" (or the j is for John Resig, the founder of the script. I think the first one is true) . Being able to query the DOM easily the name jQuery is coined. 

Or in the words of the author, John Resig:

"I was, originally, going to use JSelect, but all the domain names were taken already. I then did a search before I decided to call the project jQuery".

If you are a Dynamic Web Apps (RIA) developer then jQuery is a "must have" for you.