Despite our warnings about the horrors of pregnancy, childbirth, and babies, some of you are still destined to become parents, if you haven't done it already. Congratulations! Now prepare to be terrified, because you have no idea what you're about to face. And we're not even talking about that first diaper change.
jQuery has two usage styles: 1  Via the $ function, which is a factory method for the jQuery object. These functions, often called commands, are chainable as they all return jQuery objects. 2  Via $.-prefixed functions. These are utility functions, which do not act upon the jQuery object directly.
While many web developers confuse JavaScript and jQuery as two separate programming languages, it is important for you to realize that they are both JavaScript. The difference is that jQuery has been optimized to perform many common scripting functions and it does so while using fewer lines of code.