jQuery

In 2005, John Resig was a computer science student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He spent his days coding websites and constantly ran into the same problem: making JavaScript work across different browsers was an uphill battle. Each browser had its own rules, its own quirks. You had to write multiple versions of the same code, test, fix, and start over. This situation exhausted developers and slowed everyone down.

He decided to create his own solution. The following year, at a technology event called BarCampNYC, he presented the first version of jQuery. His ambition could be summed up in one sentence: make JavaScript programming enjoyable. He drew inspiration from the work of Charles Willison, a British developer who had created css_selector.js, a library for selecting CSS elements. Resig took this idea and pushed it much further.

jQuery offered a simple interface for manipulating web pages. Developers could select HTML elements with complex expressions, modify them, and animate them. The selection engine worked remarkably well. Later, this engine was extracted into a separate library called Sizzle, as it represented such a significant technical advancement.

But jQuery’s real strength didn’t lie solely in its code. Resig had understood something that many other developers overlooked: good documentation was worth its weight in gold. Between 2006 and 2007, jQuery was the only open-source JavaScript library to offer complete and clear documentation. Other projects left developers to fend for themselves with the source code. This attention to detail changed everything.

Resig first hired a community manager. Not an additional developer, no: someone whose job was to answer questions and support users. He was thinking ahead and knew that a technical tool doesn’t spread on its own.

Initially, jQuery remained a side project. Resig was working on other things. His hiring at Mozilla changed the game. The company allowed him to dedicate work time to jQuery. He could then build the necessary infrastructure and prepare the project to continue without him. He later left Mozilla for Khan Academy, but jQuery was already launched.

The library achieved tremendous success in the late 2000s. It made sophisticated techniques like animations and Ajax requests accessible. Developers adopted it massively. According to W3Techs, approximately 74% of websites used jQuery at its peak. A staggering figure.

The project grew, and so did its governance. A jQuery Board emerged in 2011, followed by a jQuery Foundation in 2012. Then came a merger with the Dojo Foundation in 2015, creating the JS Foundation. In 2019, another merger with the Node.js Foundation: the OpenJS Foundation was born, and jQuery retained its status as a major project.

But the web was evolving. Browser vendors—Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla—began working together within the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. Incompatibilities between browsers decreased. Browsers themselves integrated features that made jQuery less indispensable. The Fetch API replaced Ajax functions. The querySelector and querySelectorAll methods enabled element selection just as jQuery did. The classList interface simplified CSS class manipulation.

Browsers adopted automatic and continuous updates. Fixes and new features reached users automatically, without manual action. Developers could exploit new web features more quickly. They needed fewer compatibility solutions.

Internet Explorer gradually died. Microsoft discontinued support for versions 10 and earlier in 2016, keeping only IE 11. This disappearance freed developers from the constraints that had originally justified jQuery.

New frameworks emerged: React, Angular, Vue. They proposed a different approach, component-based, facilitating the construction of complex interfaces. They encouraged declarative programming where the developer describes the desired state rather than the steps to achieve it. jQuery, on the other hand, remained imperative.

Some major players abandoned jQuery. GitHub removed it from its interface. Bootstrap announced it would drop it in version 5, as jQuery constituted its main client-side JavaScript dependency.

Yet jQuery didn’t disappear. For simple sites requiring little interactivity, the library remains a proven and easy-to-implement solution. Its imperative approach remains more accessible to beginners than modern declarative paradigms. In certain professional contexts where old versions of Internet Explorer still run, jQuery retains its usefulness. The library continues to evolve, maintained by a loyal community. Many developers appreciate its concise syntax and use it by preference, while native alternatives exist. The progression of web standards and the emergence of new approaches testify to the continuous evolution of technologies, a process in which jQuery has largely participated by establishing practices that endure.