javascript - Why is jQuery a lightweight library? - Stack Overflow

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jQuery is preferred a lot these days and one of the reasons or plus point is that it is said to be a very lightweight library. My question is what exactly makes it a lightweigt library? Is it the way the code is written OR is it the event handling mechanism OR has it something to do with the DOM?

Also to add, the performance of any web app which uses jQuery is much better pared to one with normal Javascript (e.g. smoother animation effects).

jQuery is preferred a lot these days and one of the reasons or plus point is that it is said to be a very lightweight library. My question is what exactly makes it a lightweigt library? Is it the way the code is written OR is it the event handling mechanism OR has it something to do with the DOM?

Also to add, the performance of any web app which uses jQuery is much better pared to one with normal Javascript (e.g. smoother animation effects).

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Share Improve this question Follow edited Aug 31, 2011 at 8:19 pimvdb 155k8080 gold badges311311 silver badges356356 bronze badges asked Aug 31, 2011 at 7:53 copenndthagencopenndthagen 50.9k105105 gold badges313313 silver badges490490 bronze badges 4

• 3 I think it has to do with size. – apscience Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 7:54
• 2 because when minified it only weighs 31KB – Rafay Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 7:57
• 31KB might not be small for some uses – timc3 Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 7:59
• 1 That's 31KB minified AND gzipped. Only minified is 90KB. – Kernel James Commented Jan 28, 2013 at 10:58

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4 Answers 4

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The filesize is small when gzipped, and particular pains have been taken to ensure that it's as small as possible (avoiding use of eval when parsing JSON for instance).

It also concentrates on only having useful features, so it doesn't include things like a lightbox plugin or a way to create tabs, it just offers basic building blocks to build plex things.

Size is one thing - jQuery 1.6.2 clocks in at around 31KB - but more importantly, jQuery is very low-level, meaning it doesn't try to do more than most of us need. UI features (which many developers don't need) are moved to a separate plugin, as are templates, advanced animations and effects, etc.

This helps to keep the framework itself very lean and useful to the widest possible group of developers.

It can mean several different things. Some mentioned by others.

But I would like to add the simplicity.

You can make use of a JQuery function with extremely little code overhead, just include the js file and you are ready to use it in one line. As opposite to have a lot of config files special initialize and so on.

Well it is light in the fact that it is quite performant, but being lightweight obviously depends on what you are paring it to.

Plenty of developers would argue that it isn't pared to implementing certain behavior in just Javascript.

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