jQuery Alternatives

What is jQuery

HTML, CSS, Javascript are the technologies that are understood by Web. HTML is used for defining a layout of the page, CSS for styling of the web pages. Javascript is the programming language of the web. Updating content, animations, an interaction of web pages with a user, all these, in fact, everything is controlled by javascript.

jQuery:

jQuery is a framework, rather a wrapper around the javascript. jQuery has become extremely important in the web because of various advantages like it is extremely lightweight compared to javascript, easy to learn and implement. jQuery pages load very quickly.

Why or when should we look for jQuery Alternatives!

Say you don’t need all the methods that are in jQuery API and you would need only a few among them, you could look for alternatives. jQuery is around 250Kb. Maybe if you are looking for a smaller file that does all your needs, you would want to look for jQuery Alternatives.

List of jQuery Alternatives

Below is the Different jQuery Alternatives which are as follows:

Javascript:

Nevertheless, Native javascript is one of the best jQuery alternatives, in fact, It is the framework of JS. Javascript is the best because any browsers ships with javascript and you do not need to install jQuery in your application. Also, JS is one of the best alternatives when you had to deal with some very old browsers which would look for only certain versions of jQuery. The only con of using it is syntax is not extremely friendly as jQuery provides.

Sample Usage:

var element = document.getElementById(“media”);

element.classList.add(“my style”);

Cash:

Cash is a tiny plugin (~10% the size of jQuery)  that supports browsers above IE10+. Its syntax is similar to jQuery. It might not have every feature that jQuery has but it has almost every important basic features that we would need.

Sample Usage:

var element = $(“div”);

$(element).attr ( attrName, attrValue )

UmbrellaJS:

UmbrellaJS is highly influenced by jQuery and has few extra features in it and also the file is very small compared to mobile. UmbrellaJS is supported by major browsers and IE11+. In UmbrellaJS, you can use native javascript methods on the umbrella selectors, unlike jQuery.

UmbrellaJS syntax is similar to that of jQuery with a difference of using u instead of $

Sample Usage:

u(“button”).on(‘click’, function(){

alert(“Hello world”);

});

Chibi JS:

ChibiJS is developed to get rid of the large size of jQuery. ChibiJS is only around 7kb and has all the essential methods that are mostly used. Coming to Browser support, this supports all modern to old browsers. This plugin does not provide animations. Chibi executes DOM manipulations 20% to 50% faster than many libraries.

Chibi syntax is similar to jQuery to respect the fact that small and big library syntaxes should never be mixed

Sample Usage:

$(“p”).hide()

ZeptoJS:

ZeptoJS can be considered as the minimalist javascript library with high compatibility with jQuery. The goal of this library is not to compete with jQuery but to achieve the maximum of its API with very less size. Size of ZeptoJS is only 5-10kB and downloads and executes very faster. Supports all major browsers and IE10+.

Sample Usage:

$.camelCase(‘hello-there’)

MooTools:

Mootools is the collection of javascript utility functions for medium to advanced javascript programmer. It is a lightweight javascript framework. Its coherent and robust API allows writing strong and flexible code. It has very good documentation available and API is coherent.

Mootools is beneficial as it allows the user to chose their own customized components. It follows object oriented practices.MooTools provides enhancements to DOM which enables developers to add, modify, delete any DOM elements. Element storage is also present in MooTools

Sample Usage:

$$(‘div.foo, div.bar’);

var myElement = new Element(‘div#bar.foo’);

myElement.addEvent(‘click’, function(){

alert(clicked!’);

});

ExtJS:

ExtJS stands for Extended Javascript. It is a product from Sencha and is based on YahooUserInterface. It is basically a desktop application development programming language. ExtJS is supported by all browsers like IE6+, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc.. ExtJS is based on MVC/MVVM architecture.

ExtJS also provides a great collection of high performance, customizable widgets

Sample Usage:

var el = Ext.get(“my-div”);

var el=Ext.Element.get(“my-div”);

Apart from this, there are many other small frameworks available that can do one task/functionality end to end. MicroJS is one site that has many micro frameworks available. In this website, we can simply check for what our requirement is, and utilize that framework only.

Recommended Articles:

This has been a guide to jQuery Alternatives. Here we have discussed the Lists of jQuery Alternatives with their  Sample Usages. You may also look at the following articles to learn more:

1. JavaScript vs JQuery
2. How to Install JavaScript
3. Introduction To JavaScript
4. jQuery Interview Questions