CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jqueryjavascript
copenndthagen
copenndthagen

Reputation: 50752

Why is jQuery a lightweight library?

jQuery is preferred a lot these days and one of the reasons or plus point is that it is said to be a very lightweight library. My question is what exactly makes it a lightweigt library? Is it the way the code is written OR is it the event handling mechanism OR has it something to do with the DOM?

Also to add, the performance of any web app which uses jQuery is much better compared to one with normal Javascript (e.g. smoother animation effects).

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3774

Answers (4)

user425367
user425367

Reputation:

It can mean several different things. Some mentioned by others.

But I would like to add the simplicity.

You can make use of a JQuery function with extremely little code overhead, just include the js file and you are ready to use it in one line. As opposite to have a lot of config files special initialize and so on.

Upvotes: 1

timc3
timc3

Reputation: 149

Well it is light in the fact that it is quite performant, but being lightweight obviously depends on what you are comparing it to.

Plenty of developers would argue that it isn't compared to implementing certain behavior in just Javascript.

Upvotes: 0

Jens Roland
Jens Roland

Reputation: 27770

Size is one thing - jQuery 1.6.2 clocks in at around 31KB - but more importantly, jQuery is very low-level, meaning it doesn't try to do more than most of us need. UI features (which many developers don't need) are moved to a separate plugin, as are templates, advanced animations and effects, etc.

This helps to keep the framework itself very lean and useful to the widest possible group of developers.

Upvotes: 4

Rich Bradshaw
Rich Bradshaw

Reputation: 72965

The filesize is small when gzipped, and particular pains have been taken to ensure that it's as small as possible (avoiding use of eval when parsing JSON for instance).

It also concentrates on only having useful features, so it doesn't include things like a lightbox plugin or a way to create tabs, it just offers basic building blocks to build complex things.

Upvotes: 7

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