JQuery popularity growing by leaps and bounds

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If you type “JQuery” into Google Insights for Search, you will see an steeply upward trending curve indicating that more and more web searches are being done on the word “JQuery”.

If you have never heard of JQuery, it is time to find out at the official JQuery website. I would say that the next thing that a web designer should learn after Photoshop, HTML, and CSS, would be JQuery. After you know how to design a page in Photoshop, and then know how to build the page in HTML, and then know how to make it pretty with CSS, it is time to add interactivity such as animation, fades, element hiding, form validations, and so on — all of which can be accomplished with the help of JQuery.

Sure, it can all be done using Javascript.  But most people who have coded in Javascript and JQuery would say that JQuery is a lot more fun.  Unlike Javascript, you don’t have to worry about cross-browser issues because JQuery handles that for you.   Technically, JQuery is Javascript.  In short, JQuery is a cross-browser Javascript Library that happens to be also free.  So you do have to write some Javascript code and some basic Javascript concepts.

JQuery was created by John Resig who is now lead developer of JQuery.  JQuery was released in 2006.   According to Wikipedia as of January 2011, JQuery is now the most popular Javascript library in use with 41% of the 10,000 most visited websites using JQuery.

The JQuery library is included in WordPress.  And both Microsoft and Nokia is adopting JQuery. It is popular enough for Google to include in their Content Distribution Network (or CDN).

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