How useful is jQuery?

[sugnosaj]

jQuery is a big file. Like 2mb I think, last time I checked it out.

It seems to me that 2mb is just too big to load it on your website. Is jQuery really worth that load time?

[Jeff Mott]

It's actually about 32KB. So I'd say yes, worth it.

[sugnosaj]

yeah, you're right, dude. i just checked out the site. it says 32kb zipped, 247kb unzipped. I don't know what I was thinking. I swear I checked it out before it was like 2mb.

This is a pretty useless thread then. jQuery is awesome. Sorry about that.

[Jeff Mott]

No worries.

[007Julien]

The full version of jQuery is too very usefull to learn to write script and especially to studies exceptions like, for example, this (lines 164 to 178) :

	elem = document.getElementById( match[2] );

		// Check parentNode to catch when Blackberry 4.6 returns
		// nodes that are no longer in the document #6963
		if ( elem && elem.parentNode ) {
			// Handle the case where IE and Opera return items
			// by name instead of ID
			if ( elem.id !== match[2] ) {
				return rootjQuery.find( selector );
			}

			// Otherwise, we inject the element directly into the jQuery object
		this.length = 1;
		this[0] = elem;
	}

[Jeff Mott]

The full version of jQuery is too very usefull to learn to write script and especially to studies exceptions like, for example, this (lines 164 to 178) :

...
		// Check parentNode to catch when Blackberry 4.6 returns
		// nodes that are no longer in the document #6963
...
			// Handle the case where IE and Opera return items
			// by name instead of ID

Yes, exactly! jQuery is updated to accommodate new devices and new browsers, and the code you or I write happily just works. It's such a simple concept. I remember the days when one or two particular people here didn't/couldn't/wouldn't see it that way. Boy am I glad those days have passed.