jQuery Best Practices
Corey Light
November 2013 / Show-Me Tech
Why jQuery?
- Easy + Readable
- Chainable
- Flexible
- Collaborative + Popular
176+ contributors
Let's Remember...
- jQuery is a function
- $ is not magic (although it is money)
- $ is not appropriate for all uses
This talk is not about general JS best practices, so let's assume we are using an object literal notation or something close to it, with (lots of!) named functions.
Let's get the basics down
Selectors take time - chain them!
Don't guess it, test it!
Keep it D.R.Y. and cache those selectors too!
Benefits:
- More flexible
- $ doesn't have to look up your DOM element every time
String manipulation > DOM manipulation
Benefits:
- Faster, noticeably so when dealing with a lot of elements
- More flexible to remove and modify strings independently