I believe many of you want to know the real differences between JavaScript and JQuery. You are noticing that both of these softwares start with J but besides that there are many other similarities which we are going to explore here. The fact is that many professional web developers as well as amateur one are interested in knowing these differences and similarities for better productivity and overall improvement.

I know that JavaScript and JQuery may confuse you and you might feel lost sometimes, but the fact is that these softwares are actually same thing. It may sound surprising that without JavaScript we wouldn’t have JQuery. JQuery is big part of the JavaScript containing JavaScript libraries. In fact JQuery is designed particulaly in order to make HTML documents easier for animation, Ajax interactions, traversing and event handling.

In this article it will be discussed about differences and similarities between JavaScript and JQuery and basic scripting languages. Before doing anything you need basic foundation when it comes to the web development using one of these scripting languages. If you have poor knowledge and you never get used to working with these scripting languages, I recommend you to read article JavaScript Made Easy. After reading this article you will know for sure which scripting language is right for you and will give you best performance in your future web development assignments.

What is JavaScript?

We should begin with explaining basics and features of JavaScript. As you may already know JavaScript is computer scripting language which is created for inteface interactions and slideshows inside your web browser. It mainly means it is used for slideshows which you can notice while searching through web sites. You noticed on the internet while watching slideshows images. These flashy moving images are in fact JavaScript scriptingin the background.

Besides doing interface interactions in the background, there are many other uses of JavaScript in the process of web development. Every Gmail user is familiar with the real power of JavaScript. The fact is that many popular features of Gmail and overall improvement of Google clients are designed with the powerful features of JavaScript. Besides being used in improvement of many web clients JavaScript is used for game development, designing desktop applications and server-side programs.

There is no surprise that JavaScript is powerful scripting language which is widely used in web development. The greatest advantage is that it is really easy to learn it’s fetaures and basics which makes this computer language perfect for beginners in web development. It is designed in order to be really readable and modifiable.

You may be familiar with the issues of JavaScript in the past. These issues included problems with every web browser, so JavaScript developers invested great amount of time fixing these bugs and problems. Today these bugs are not great issue and JavaScript is working on all major web browsers with the integration of the technology so deep that even high competitive online industries like gambling and bingo sites started to heavy implement JavaScript and JQuery.

What is JQuery?

JavaScript frameworks were born before introducing and creating of JQuery. These frameworks represent group of codes which allowed the developers to invest more time in fixing the bugs and to improve overall features of JavaScript. These custom frameworks were the beginnings of JQuery. Group of codes in fact represent free to use and open source libraries. JQuery is so part of JavaScript including these open source libraries.

JavaScript contains man other libraries like MooTools, but JQuery became the most popular due to its great performance and powerful features which makes it perfect scripting language for beginners. You may think about JavaScript and JQuery as different computer languages but the fact is that both of them are actually JavaScript. The greatest difference between them is in their line of performance. JQuery is widely used for many scripting functions, requires fewer codes and gives same performance.

JavaScript vs JQuery

There is one question always asked by many web developers. There are many discussions about which scripting language is the best. There is no right answer to this question because neither is the best. The truth is the both of these computer languages have their particular roles and qualities. You may find yourself in situation where JQuery is not the right tool so you have to go straight to JavaScript. But while working on online applications in the past, JQuery was many times more than enough and all that was needed.

The main goal of web developers is to make decision on which particular tools are the best for their client. Someone who is first time coming into the world of web development needs to come across both with the JavaScript and JQuery. Using only one of these scripting languages will not give you greater performance and more knowledge unless you use both of them until you decide which one is better for you. It is known fact that JavaScript is slowing down projects and that JQuery framework is requiring fewer line of codes. The conclusion is that both of these scripting languages have their particular qualities and features.

JavaScript and JQuery Examples

When we talk about the advantages of JavaScript and its frameworks especially JQuery, which is the most popular JavaScript library, we have to mention amazing speed in which every code can be generated. Like I mentioned before every single code line can change interaction between user and project in short amount of time.

In the first example with the assistance of JQuery web developers can change background of your web site. This won’t take much time and requires less effort. For developers this particularly means greater speed and greater performance while developing online applications and programs.

When it comes to the writing program with the JavaScript as shown in example two, in order to achieve same goal web developers have to test and run it on different web browsers before writing any codes. This usually takes greater amount of time than writing codes in JQuery.

This is the example of changing the background color of particular body tag using JQuery

$('body').css('background', '#ccc');

When it comes to the changing background color using JavaScript, it requires processing onload function which is going to be placed within body tag

function changeBackground(color) { document.body.style.background = color; } onload="changeBackground('red');"

Should I use JavaScript or JQuery?

Depending on the circumstances, using JavaScript will provide you with most of the features you need while performing functions. When it comes to the JQuery, for most online applications and major websites it provides web developers with excellent performance.

In the conclusion, either option is good in order to achieve same effect while providing users with different perfomance. Like I mentiond before JQuery requires fewer lines of codes in order to perform a function. For most web development projects JQuery will be more than enough. You may come across other web development projects which are going to require only JavaScript. In both cases the better option and the safest one is to get to know both of these scripting language before making decision about which of these scripting language better suits your needs.