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You might not need jQuery

youmightnotneedjquery.com

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Re: You might not need jQuery

#131

Post by nilsbunger »

efuquen wrote: post #57

No, please no. If size is an issue for some reason or you want to have no dependencies you can use something like http://zeptojs.com/ and just embed everything in one minified file. If you do things right only the functions you are actually using will get placed in there as well. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve problems that can't be solved in much cleaner and nicer ways. Managing dependencies can be annoying, but…

It's better if libraries don't just assume jQuery is everywhere, because I suspect those days are ending. Apps built on newer front-end frameworks like Angular and React might not need it, for example.

As a library author it's becoming more important to think case-by-case -- use raw JS if you just have some simple selections or XHRs, or use Zepto/etc if that covers you, and only depend on jQuery if you really need its richness in your lib.

So in that spirit, I appreciated the article.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#132

Post by daleharvey »

jpatte wrote: post #96
sfeng wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need an abstraction to do something that's natively implemented on your platform.

Abstractions are meant to, well, abstract an implementation. You might very well want to abstract a native operation for a bunch of different reasons. You don't need to, but maybe you should. For example, $(el).hide() is quite more readable than el.style.display = 'none' . And I'm not even talking about the other advantages.

Its

   el.hidden = true;
in modern browsers

Re: You might not need jQuery

#133

Post by Orva »

efuquen wrote: post #57

No, please no. If size is an issue for some reason or you want to have no dependencies you can use something like http://zeptojs.com/ and just embed everything in one minified file. If you do things right only the functions you are actually using will get placed in there as well. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve problems that can't be solved in much cleaner and nicer ways. Managing dependencies can be annoying, but…

Size really is issue when dealing with mobile devices. Even from disk cache each KB increases startuptime by about 1ms (and jquery 2 is ~32kb minified, for Also, last time I checked jquery uses "querySelectorAll" for that fancy $("selector") syntax, which is slow as hell with every possible browser compared to "getElementBy*". This might not be issue with desktop machines, but you will probably lose most of your mobile users because of that. Jquery does also exposes very dangearous things from the API. For example: most of the time use of css modifying from JS just implies that your UI logic is fundamentally flawed (also, incredibly slow as poking CSS from JS will force full relayout which will make your mobile users throw their devices to wall or leave your site).

Jquery lets people cut corners which will give short term benefits, true. But in long term you are just killing your user experience. And like others said, people mostly use like 1% of the API, which has as easy native browser support.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#134

Post by padseeker »

I use jQuery because the DOM API for javascript sucks, and writing jQuery is fun.

You're average web app perhaps doesn't need the latest Ruby/Python/PHP framework, or perhaps it you can write it without the framework. Or perhaps you can a compiled as opposed to interpreted language because that would be faster. OR maybe you can use something that is even faster, like perhaps Assembler! Fuck it write machine code if speed is the most important thing.

Do you know why you don't? Cause writing Assembler or machine code sucks. You lose very little in load time by including a minified version of jQuery, while you gain an enormous amount of ease of use and readability. Also it'll be more fun.

Just include the jQuery and be done with it.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#135

Post by ep103 »

sfeng wrote: post #61
ep103 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right off the bat its wrong, IE8 doesn't include JSON support unless you're in strict mode.

You have it a bit backwards, IE8 doesn't include JSON support when you are in quirks mode, which no modern application should ever be in.

should is the most important word in that sentence : )

Re: You might not need jQuery

#136

Post by wyuenho »

efuquen wrote: post #57

No, please no. If size is an issue for some reason or you want to have no dependencies you can use something like http://zeptojs.com/ and just embed everything in one minified file. If you do things right only the functions you are actually using will get placed in there as well. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve problems that can't be solved in much cleaner and nicer ways. Managing dependencies can be annoying, but…

1) Zepto is POS. It offers the illusion of jQuery compatibility while delivering only maybe 80% of it. You simply cannot reverse-engineer something 100% without doing everything the original does, so you might as well use jQuery.

2) In 2014, jQuery feels like it is the wheel reinvented. I'm looking at the jQuery API modules now and here's what I consider jQuery is still useful (as in nontrivial to replicate):

  - AJAX (Too many cross-browser differences in XHR/XDR implementations)
  - Event delegation (Too many cross-browser differences in what gets triggered/bubble/cancelable)
Most things in jQuery may only save you a couple of keystrokes to a few lines of code. For everything else, you can drop in a small library / polyfill when needed to get back something like $.Deferred or the $.fn.serialize() or $.fn.val(). In fact, there are already many small libraries that aim to do just one thing only and do it well.

3) You never need all of jQuery. If you need all of jQuery, you are doing it wrong. I don't even want to look at your giant pile of procedural, chained-20-times-for-every-element hourglass-shaped callback pasta.

4) The plugin ecosystem is horrible. This might have to do with the fact that jQuery doesn't give you any help other than a namespace. Most plugins come with ginormous pile of options and/or very rigid and opaque HTML/CSS structures. Most of them don't come with tests, are extremely buggy and very very hard to tweak.

5) jQuery is extremely slow. Its slowest parts are creating the context because of Sizzle and event delegation. My recent PR for Backbone to make jQuery optional in its View is around 70% faster using all native DOM methods.

6) jQuery was born in 2006, when IE6 still had 70% of market share. jQuery's many layers of smooth-overs come at a very high performance cost, and it doesn't even smooth things over that well. There are still many edge cases in event handling such as triggering a click that bubbles on a detached element on Webkit that jQuery just can't do for you. Shouldn't you aim to provide the best experience for the 50-80% of users out there who are on modern browsers instead of a mediocre experience for 100% of them?

Re: You might not need jQuery

#138

Post by nostrademons »

nswanberg wrote: post #118
nostrademons wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have element.classList on all modern browsers now: http://caniuse.com/#search=classList It used to be that the first thing I'd reach for when building a prototype was JQuery off a CDN, but now I find that more and more of what I use JQuery for is built into the browser, and in my last few prototypes I've just stopped including it at all because I don't need it.

Did anyone ever take you up on your hackathon idea? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6645426

Nope, I didn't hear anything further on it. Still seems like an interesting event to me, though finding time might be hard. (FWIW, we do similar things within my employer all the time.)

Re: You might not need jQuery

#139

Post by npongracic »

I think this is great, i was also thinking of replacing jquery functionality in some of my scripts with native methods and this helps me alot.

One question though, what is the pure javascript equivalent of $(document).on('click', '.selector', function() { // do something });

This is the new jquery .live() replacement and i need it because normal events stop working after async postbacks (eg. from an asp.net UpdatePanel).

Will this code do the trick if i attach it to the document element? Also i need IE8+ support :)

function addEventListener(el, eventName, handler) { if (el.addEventListener) el.addEventListener(eventName, handler) else el.attachEvent('on' + eventName, handler) }

addEventListener(el, eventName, handler)

Re: You might not need jQuery

#140

Post by achairapart »

I feel empathy for the OP, for two main reasons:

1) The fact that some people don't realize that JavaScript != jQuery scares me.

2) jQuery born when cross-browser compatibility was a mess and today it still carries that weight. I think nowadays it needs to be more modular and less monolithic.

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