Learning jQuery

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on danheberden.com.

jQuery’s .animate() method, and the shorthand methods that use it, are fantastic tools to create animations. Creating animations that link together to achieve a particular effect, and do something specific at the end of the animation, can be a painful, messy task. Luckily, we have .queue() for mashing animations together.

But what happens when you want to bridge the gap between ajax requests and animating? When you want to queue a bunch of animations, get data from the server, and handle it all at once, without a crap-load of nested callbacks? That’s when jQuery.Deferred() puts on its cape, tightens its utility belt, and saves the day.

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I just got back from the jQuery conference in San Francisco. Wow, what an event. In addition to some incredible talks, I had the opportunity to speak with Rey Bango, Johnathon Sharp, and, of course, John Resig. Any conference where you get to talk to some of the most influential people in jQuery is a win in my book. The “High Performance JQuery” presentation especially caught my attention when the speaker, Robert Duffy, said that .hide() and .show() were slower than changing the css directly. Not having occasion to ask him why, I benchmarked the various ways to hide DOM elements and looked into the jQuery source to find out what is going on.

The HTML I tested against was a page of 100 div tags with a class and some content, I cached the selector $('div') to use with each method to exclude the time needed to find all the div elements on the page from the test. I used jQuery 1.4.2 for the testing, but keep in mind that the algorithms behind the method calls can change dramatically from version to version. What is true for 1.4.2 is not necessarily true for other versions of the library.

The methods I tested were .toggle(), .show() & .hide(), .css({'display':'none'}) & .css({'display':'block'}), and .addClass('hide') & .removeClass('hide'). I also tested modifying an attribute of a <style> element.

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Before we begin, please accept my apologies for not posting this tutorial sooner. I know at least two or three people were beginning to wonder if I’d ever finish what I started with this tooltip series. Please also forgive me if the phrase “flip your tip” has a double meaning in some ultra-hip corner of the universe. If it does, I can assure you that I am unaware of it—ignorant and unhip, to be sure, but more important, innocent. Now, on with the show.

Quick Review

In my last three tutorials, I discussed how to put together a very simple tooltip, and I introduced a different feature or concept in each one. In an effort to continue in the spirit of simplicity, I will refrain from repeating the explanations of previous posts and instead simply direct your attention to them before we begin:

• Simple Tooltip for Huge Number of Elements
• Binding Multiple Events to Reduce Redundancy with Event Delegation Tooltips
• Using setTimeout to Delay Showing Event Delegation Tooltips

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In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a navigation menu that slides horizontally. It begins with a set of “tabs” on the right side of a containing element. When clicked, a tab slides to the left to reveal a group of links. Click the tab again, and it slides back. While I’ve never had a need to build one of these for any of my own projects, quite a few people have asked if I would demonstrate how it might be done, so here goes. Read the rest of this entry »

Although jQuery has a nice set of slide methods — .slideDown(), .slideUp(), and .slideToggle() — sometimes we may want to slide an element in a different direction. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to do.

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Easing can really bring life to an effect. Easing controls how an animation progresses over time by manipulating its acceleration. jQuery has two built-in easing methods: linear and swing. While they get the job done, they are pretty boring when compared to what’s made available through the jQuery easing plugin.

The jQuery easing plugin offers 30 different easing methods, courtesy of Robert Penner’s easing equations. Let’s check some of them out.

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