I was about to make a short screencast showing how to use a jQuery plugin I created when I realized … there are still web developers out there who haven’t used jQuery!

So … developers who aren’t yet fully comfortable with jQuery … this one is for you!

I show you how to:

• Download jQuery to use in your apps (or just the Google Ajax Libraries version)
• Browse the jQuery API via Visual jQuery
• Select elements on the page, eg. $('a')
• Do stuff with elements on the page, eg. $('a').css('color', 'blue')
• Method chaining, eg. $('a').css('color', 'blue').text('foo')
• Unobtrusive JavaScript (UJS) with jQuery, ie. event handling with jQuery
• Running stuff once the DOM is fully loaded, eg. $(document).ready(function(){ ... })
• Writing your own jQuery functions so you can say $('a').myCoolFunction()

I think I’ll do another screencast on Ajax with jQuery … but I hope this shows you the basics!

1 $(document).ready(function(){
2 
3   $('li').css('color', 'red');
4 
5   $('h1').click(function(){
6     alert('clicked on header with text: ' + $(this).text());
7   });
8 
9 });