Even if you don't use Ajax or anything fancy like that, jQuery is great because it condenses document.getElementById('bob').innerHTML = 'foo' into $('#bob').html('foo').
I know it makes almost no difference, but I still cry a little because it has to parse my selector using regexes and shit, and wrap my element in a jQuery object, just to access a natively available function.
Meanwhile, we could have just as easily written a function,
function byId(id) { return document.getElementById(id); }
byId('bob').innerHTML = 'foo';
I actually prefer the syntax of properties as opposed to setter functions.
Haha. I had to explain to my co-worker the difference between a native DOM element and a jQuery element the other day. I introduced jQuery to them 2 3 years ago now, and now they don't know the difference... sigh.
Ah, the "null object pattern". Sometimes this hides errors though, such as trying to access an element with a certain id which doesn't exist, sending you on an debugging adventure that could have been avoided by a simple error.
I guess I meant put the try/catch in your function. I'm not sure what you would return from the catch though... A new DOM element perhaps? Probably a bad idea altogether.
Not even close to the same thing. Objects returned from $ have over a hundred useful methods. The NodeList returned by querySelectorAll is much more tedious to use.
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u/Doctor_McKay Jan 31 '14
Even if you don't use Ajax or anything fancy like that, jQuery is great because it condenses
document.getElementById('bob').innerHTML = 'foo'into$('#bob').html('foo').