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jQuery 1.4 has been released, and it has brought with it what I think of as the second coming in terms of web scripting. We’ve had JavaScript for years. Ever since Netscape. However, it has taken a long time for people to do really interesting stuff with it, beyond your usual run-of-the-mill price calculators and so on.

JavaScript frameworks began popping up over the last few years with the aim of making it easier to make cool stuff with the added bonus of cross-compatibility, but there were still niggles. jQuery has become my framework of choice and it had the odd issue which annoyed me, in particular the slow-as-hell documentation site and certain speed issues in certain browsers (read: IE6-7).

However, jQuery is now getting ever more backing from major software companies and is being used across the web. The upshot of all of this? The new version has made certain functions up to 10x faster than in jQuery 1.3, which is damn impressive. Coupled with this, they have replaced the dog-slow Mediawiki based documentation site with a speedy WordPress installation, with complete documentation for every function, packed with examples and tracking of the changes throughout jQuery’s history, way back to 1.0 from 2006.

So you can now see why I think jQuery 1.4 is the second coming – of scripting.

Sanity. Its an important thing. It stops you shouting at passing cars in the street or smothering yourself in ice cream before hurling yourself down a supermarket aisle. That is why jQuery is so important to me – I value my sanity. Also, Tesco value their stock of Ben & Jerry’s.

1. Cross-browser differences with JavaScript can be largely eliminated. No need to re-code that bit of animation so it works in IE 6 as well as Firefox 3.5, jQuery will handle it all for you. Don’t get me started on the ‘for…in’ construct and how ‘.each()’ saves the day every time.
2. Everything you want to do is even more simple than you can believe. What used to take over a dozen lines of code can usually be expressed in one line.
3. Chaining. It may rile some programmers up, but when you can chain function calls together on a single object, you end up with cleaner, more readable and more semantic code.
4. Plug-ins. There are so many of them around now that just about anything you want to do has already been done at least once. Sure, the jQuery site could use some improvements when it comes to searching the docs or plugin database, but it is all there for you.
5. Light weight. In comparison to MooTools, jQuery is quite hefty. But when you compare it to nearly every other JavaScript framework out there, you will see that when minified, the library is small enough to justify its addition to your code base. Every byte transmitted and processed delays the user seeing your website, so you have to balance the good against the bad!

These are my reasons, what are yours?