Looking for Inspiration: How can jQuery be truly useful?

Question

• After I read jQuery in Action, I could grok the purpose and strengths of the jQuery Core API.
  • To date, I've used jQuery in several production applications.
• But now I'd like to graduate from a jQuery novice to a jQuery professional.

Do any blogs or books detail how jQuery can be truly useful in production applications?

• Essentially, I'm looking for jQuery inspiration.
  • i.e. I have a feeling that other developers in the blogosphere have thought of interesting ways to use jQuery.

In a nutshell:

• I read 'jQuery in Action'.
• I've used jQuery in several production applications.
• Now what?

Answer 1

Play with it. Seriously.

Answer 2

How can jQuery make me more productive?

By preventing you from:

1. Writing way too many lines of code processing the DOM.
2. Wasting time figuring out how to do some things in a cross-browser way.

By allowing you to:

1. Think more directly about the goal of the code (avoiding lots of DOM manipulations)
2. Take advantage of other people's work (plugins, too)

Answer 3

Now it's time to put in practice what you have learned from the book.

Reading books is not enough to learn a language/technology. You must "get your hands dirty".

If you read, you forget. If you interact with the technology you're reading about you actually learn it.

Answer 4

jQuery is javascript. So anything you've read about javascript being useful will pretty much apply. You may have heard of AJAX and the way it has changed web application design. You may have heard of Google and their applications which take advantage of AJAX and other javascript technologies.

Like any other technology, it's pretty meaningless without a problem to solve. Find a problem you want to solve, and apply your technology. Design a web application and use jQuery. If you don't have an application in mind, or a problem to solve, then you don't really need it.

Answer 5

Try rewriting some parts of your existing JavaScript codebase using it. Pick a particular hairy one involving element traversal and/or events.

Answer 6

jQuery can be useful as any other javascript frameworks, how ever the major point of jQuery is huge amount of contributors and plugins made based on it. If you are looking for already build plugins have a look here ajaxrain.com there is about 500 of them.

Answer 7

I think it rather depends on the problems you have to solve - but in plain and simple terms a lot of clever things you want to in the browser client have already been done for you in jQuery, possibly with a plug in.

The two example I have of making the complex trivial are: 1) I needed to show a message if changes had been made in any text box (you have changes to save), this took me minutes in jQuery - a very few minutes - from cold with no practical jQuery experience.

2) Autocomplete in an MVC app - add plug-in, add data, done for basic, add helper method in server side code, even more done with lots of ajaxy goodness.

You don't need helpers to do this, but in the above two cases I spend a small number of minutes adding debugged code to my app and immediately get the results I want and reasonable certainty that one lump of code won't tread on the toes of another.

Heck, document.ready is worth the price of admission almost all on its own.

Essentially the answer to the question is to first ask "how can I use scripting to make my web applications better" which leads to "how do I use jQuery to enable me to add the functionality that will make my web application better" which I think will take you where you want to go...

Answer 8

200+ Javascript / jQuery Tutorials for Designing Awesome Websites