jQuery 101: Learn jQuery (with JavaScript) from scratch

Welcome to jQuery 101: jQuery for beginners.

Let’s start with the big question: is jQuery still used? The answer is absolutely YES. jQuery is responsible for the JavaScript on hundreds of millions of websites. I’ll repeat that:

jQuery is responsible for the JavaScript on hundreds of millions of websites.

It's so common that content delivery websites track over 1 billion downloads per month (each!). That's a mind blowing number!!

jQuery was originally created to bridge the JavaScript gap between browsers before JavaScript started to become more standardized. Internet explorer and firefox used JavaScript differently. Chrome and Safari implemented JavaScript differently. And jQuery was how you could write one language that “just worked”.

These days that's less of a problem, and jQuery is simply used as a tool for writing less JavaScript in a more powerful way.

Look, I know lots of people say you should skip learning jQuery altogether, but consider this: if it’s used by over 100 million websites and still favoured by organisations like the Django Framework, then there is clearly a market demand for this skill.

What is in the course?

In the course we're going to dive into the following topics:

• Installing jQuery on your website
• What jQuery syntax looks like
• How to select HTML elements with jQuery selectors
• Changing inner HTML and text of HTML elements
• How to get form values from an HTML elements
• Adding HTML elements inside of other elements
• Adding HTML elements before and after certain elements
• How to delete HTML elements
• Event listeners including:
  • Click events
  • Hover events
  • Keyup events
  • Focus events
  • Blur events
  • Form submission events
  • Window resizing events
• How to hide and show HTML elements dynamically
• How to add and remove CSS classes dynamically
• How to add custom CSS to individual elements
• Animations including:
  • Fade in and Fade out
  • Slide down and Slide Up
  • Custom animations
• What callback functions are and how to use them in jQuery
• Element and window widths and heights using the box model
• How to loop through multiple elements and change them
• How to change HTML attributes dynamically
• Ajax calls including:
  • GET requests, and
  • POST requests

Who is this course for?

If you’re getting into JavaScript recently, this course is for you.

If you’re a backend developer and want to write nice JavaScript without needing to learn an entire framework like React, this course is for you.

About the teacher:

I’m Kalob Taulien and I’ve been using jQuery since it was invented in 2006. I’ve taught over 300,000 students and worked with clients such as NASA, Mozilla, Arctic Research Foundation, Samaritans and the NHS in the UK.

Would I call myself a jQuery expert? Yes.

Your project:

You will create a random Star Wars character generator using an API endpoint, an event listener, a random number using plain JavaScript, changing inner text of an element, changing an image elements source, an Ajax request and a little CSS to tidy things up.

Requirements:

• You should know basic HTML
• If you know a little CSS that will make jQuery a lot more fun for you
• You should know a tiny bit of JavaScript and how it works already