12 ms·

Alternative jQuery Documentation

262 points by sgallant 15y ago

thisisblurry 15y ago
Also worth taking a look at: http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/ http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/ It lets you quickly view how a particular jQuery function/method works.
lhnz 15y ago
This is very nice. Any similar resources for Python documentation, etc...?
- bzupnick 15y ago
  check out www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python
- Romme 15y ago
  Not much similar, but still useful: http://pyth0n.org/ http://pyth0n.org/
illumen 15y ago
Pretty cool. Could do with some tweaking and polishing still though. Should be valid html. Back button is broken. There should be a home button top left. The colours need tweaking for contrast, and I'm guessing other accessability tweaks. url search does not work. For example the url: http://jqapi.com/ajax http://jqapi.com/ajax returns 404. Really it should do a search for ajax and take me to that page or list search results.
- dclowd9901 15y ago
  "Should be valid html." Am I alone in thinking this is a rather dated viewpoint?
  - kevindication 15y ago
    It's easy to see what's wrong with invalid HTML. What's wrong with valid HTML?
    - dclowd9901 15y ago
      Interesting. My whole take was completely the opposite. Browsers tend to have very little problem rendering invalid markup, and the savings costs associated with invalid markup (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated. So I would pose you this question: What's wrong with invalid HTML, besides lack of some enigmatic adherence to idealism?
      - rimantas 15y ago
        > and the savings costs associated with invalid markup > (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated. Please, enumerate. I guess you are not aware that a lot of things you consider invalid are actually allowed in HTML: unquoted attributes, tags omission, etc. This was allowed even in HTML4, HTML5 gives us even more options there. Say, how would invalid markup help http://kod.as/lab/valid/ http://kod.as/lab/valid/ be even smaller? Sure, that is pretty meaningless document, but take a look at a source and you will see some stuff that can be applied to normal sites. It's valid: http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2... http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%... You could remove DOCTYPE (which is very short compared to HTML4 or XHTML versions), but then you'd throw your browsers to quirks mode, and that is a pain. The whole purpose of DOCTYPE in HTML5 is to force standards-compliant rendering mode, that's it. And it only looks that browsers have little problems parsing invalid markup. Making sense of tag soup parsing (and making it consistent) was one of the major tasks for HTML5 people.
        dclowd9901 15y ago
        I suppose I'm referring more to 4.01, since 5, as far as I know, doesn't constitute the majority of websites. Things like nonstandard attribute tags and wrapping inline elements around block elements. These are what I thought of when I thought of "dated".
Meai 15y ago
Would be nice if the sidebar was resizeable.
dwar 15y ago
Looks quite promising, but horribly broken in the iPad Safari: * Neither the ToC nor the content pane scroll. * Clicking a method link in the ToC pops up the keyboard which quickly gets annoying.
- Saad_M 15y ago
  Also the Demo’s don’t seem to work either in Safari 5.05.
- meatmanek 15y ago
  Two finger scroll works, but still sucks.
dimmuborgir 15y ago
Have been using railsapi/sdoc for many months now. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.
5a3k 15y ago
If only there was something like this for jquery-mobile.. :)
- thisisrobv 15y ago
  Agreed, anything would be a step up from what they have now. Although I would imagine it's someone on their list of things to do.
chops 15y ago
Reminds me of the http://erldocs.com http://erldocs.com for Erlang documentation.
sebilasse 15y ago
One addition to the shortcuts: I instinctively tried to press RIGHT instead of ENTER to open category, and LEFT to close category.
missing_cipher 15y ago
Offline version sold me.
d0m 15y ago
I see the effort behind this project but I have to admit that I find it a bit useless. I've never had any problems finding anything related to jquery's documentation. I simply google and the top3 results is practically always the official documentation, a great stackoverflow answer, or a blog explaining in detail what I'm looking for. But, maybe it's just the way I work; I can understand that other developers might prefer to have a great resource that they can look up instead of randomly searching google.
- d0m 15y ago
  However, something I've struggled a little more related to jquery is finding and using the plugin. The official plugin website is really not optimal and it's hard to find the "best" plugin when you're looking for something. I guess an unofficial jquery plugin website where you could easily: 1- Find a couple of plugin that do what you want 2- Let you try the demo as fast as possible 3- Let you glance over the code, see comments and rating of others developers. 4- Have an easy and clear: Crash 30 sec installation 5- Give an access to the documentation. This is the order I usually execute when searching for a jquery plugin.. it's just that each of those steps are sometime unnecessary hard. I.e. multiple versions on the jquery, hard to find the real website of the plugin, have to look github issues to see other comments, demo page not working or deprecated, hard to see the "Installation and quick example", etc.
  - markkanof 15y ago
    Yes, this is the real problem. The core jQuery documentation is nicely organized by category, and if I can't find something by browsing I can find it by using a Google search of the site. The plugins though are a mess. Any category I click on seems to have a huge list of options, some of which are great and some of which are sort of half finished and abandoned. Even if anyone could submit anything for display on the site, it might be nice to have an additional organizational layer on top that only shows a curated set of plugins. I just find something like http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ easier to browse through. I think most of the organizational concepts between the sites are the same, but there just seems to be less cruft there.
  - 15y ago
jasonkester 15y ago
Please don't give me a collapsed tree of things that I need to dig through while trying to mentally unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places. Give me a list. Of everything. Or, if you absolutely feel you have to categorize things, give me a single "Uncollapse this mess" button so that I can look for the thing I'm looking for.
- Omnipresent 15y ago
  search text field works pretty nice to avoid going through the collapsed list
  - joeyrobert 15y ago
    That is, if you know what you're searching for.
    - jacabado 15y ago
      What you are looking for is a knowledge pill! </sarcasm>
- d0m 15y ago
  "unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places." -> This is the official documentation; those categories are not the author's choice but the ones chosen by the jquery team. That would make no sense to have a list of 1000 random items not being categorized; just use the search. When you say "To use the search, I need to know what I'm looking for". Well, usually, when you search the documentation, it's because you know what you're searching for.. right? But then, I get that you might not know the "best keywords" to search what you're looking for. And, for that, it's so better to have smart category rather than a list of 1000 items. I mean, you're searching a way to post things using Ajax. You can search for ajax, you can search for post.. but you can quickly look at the categories and see Ajax; and then, instead of browsing through 1000 items, you only have to read a dozen.
  - 15y ago
snissn 15y ago
You're just supposed to use this page: http://api.jquery.com/browser/ http://api.jquery.com/browser/ It formerly used to be accessible at api.jquery.com but then they changed some things around to confuse developers...
- lmz 15y ago
  That's not updated. Try searching for the toArray method[1] (new in 1.4). [1]: http://api.jquery.com/toArray/ http://api.jquery.com/toArray/
  - seasoup 15y ago
    works for me.
    - function_seven 15y ago
      How did you find it? I can't. It looks like http://api.jquery.com/browser/ http://api.jquery.com/browser/ only works up to version 1.3
eiji 15y ago
Irony: Does not work with JavaScript disabled.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  I would expect it to be more ironic if it did work with JavaScript disabled. It's kind of hard to be a functional JQuery developer with JavaScript turned off all the time. It's like being a blind tour guide or a celibate porn star.
- micmcg 15y ago
  Thats not irony
mikey_p 15y ago
Nice, I just hope it stays up to date and the creators can turn their energy towards long term maintenance unlike http://visualjquery.com/ http://visualjquery.com/. Visual jQuery used to be my go to resource for years, until it became woefully out of date.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Ugh. It is unusable in my iPad, which I very often use for browsing documentation when working on my laptop. The keyboard pops up every time a menu is selected because they menu events automatically selects the search box. I tried to leave feedback, but e User Voice overlay is also horridly broken on the iPad.
rmason 15y ago
I think that the correct ordering of documentation differs by how your brain functions. I am very visual and my favorite JQuery documentation is http://visualjquery.com/ http://visualjquery.com/ For the same reason I was best able to learn about using jQuery by using the sites here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript-visually.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript...
seasoup 15y ago
api.jquery.com This is the nicest documentation of any language I've ever used. The page loads, the cursor defaults to the search box, you type in what you are looking for and the browser hides searches that do not match and then you can use the arrow keys to go up and down then list to the one you want. As for the problem trying to find "is" just type "is(" if you are looking for the method itself.
andyford 15y ago
http://api.jquery.com/ http://api.jquery.com/ done
- mjijackson 15y ago
  Absolutely. In the opening paragraph the author states how difficult it is to find documentation for the .is() function. http://api.jquery.com/is http://api.jquery.com/is done.
jswank 15y ago
I've been using this last spring, initially as an offline reference when flying, etc. Since then, it's become my primary reference when working with jQuery. It's perfect for what I need: instantly looking up usage details for specific methods.

262 points by sgallant 15y ago

Also worth taking a look at: http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/ http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/ It lets you quickly view how a particular jQuery function/method works.

lhnz 15y ago

This is very nice. Any similar resources for Python documentation, etc...?

bzupnick 15y ago
check out www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python
Romme 15y ago
Not much similar, but still useful: http://pyth0n.org/ http://pyth0n.org/

illumen 15y ago

Pretty cool. Could do with some tweaking and polishing still though. Should be valid html. Back button is broken. There should be a home button top left. The colours need tweaking for contrast, and I'm guessing other accessability tweaks. url search does not work. For example the url: http://jqapi.com/ajax http://jqapi.com/ajax returns 404. Really it should do a search for ajax and take me to that page or list search results.

dclowd9901 15y ago
"Should be valid html." Am I alone in thinking this is a rather dated viewpoint?
- kevindication 15y ago
  It's easy to see what's wrong with invalid HTML. What's wrong with valid HTML?
  - dclowd9901 15y ago
    Interesting. My whole take was completely the opposite. Browsers tend to have very little problem rendering invalid markup, and the savings costs associated with invalid markup (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated. So I would pose you this question: What's wrong with invalid HTML, besides lack of some enigmatic adherence to idealism?
    - rimantas 15y ago
      > and the savings costs associated with invalid markup > (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated. Please, enumerate. I guess you are not aware that a lot of things you consider invalid are actually allowed in HTML: unquoted attributes, tags omission, etc. This was allowed even in HTML4, HTML5 gives us even more options there. Say, how would invalid markup help http://kod.as/lab/valid/ http://kod.as/lab/valid/ be even smaller? Sure, that is pretty meaningless document, but take a look at a source and you will see some stuff that can be applied to normal sites. It's valid: http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2... http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%... You could remove DOCTYPE (which is very short compared to HTML4 or XHTML versions), but then you'd throw your browsers to quirks mode, and that is a pain. The whole purpose of DOCTYPE in HTML5 is to force standards-compliant rendering mode, that's it. And it only looks that browsers have little problems parsing invalid markup. Making sense of tag soup parsing (and making it consistent) was one of the major tasks for HTML5 people.
      - dclowd9901 15y ago
        I suppose I'm referring more to 4.01, since 5, as far as I know, doesn't constitute the majority of websites. Things like nonstandard attribute tags and wrapping inline elements around block elements. These are what I thought of when I thought of "dated".

Meai 15y ago

Would be nice if the sidebar was resizeable.

dwar 15y ago

Looks quite promising, but horribly broken in the iPad Safari: * Neither the ToC nor the content pane scroll. * Clicking a method link in the ToC pops up the keyboard which quickly gets annoying.

Saad_M 15y ago
Also the Demo’s don’t seem to work either in Safari 5.05.
meatmanek 15y ago
Two finger scroll works, but still sucks.

dimmuborgir 15y ago

Have been using railsapi/sdoc for many months now. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.

5a3k 15y ago

If only there was something like this for jquery-mobile.. :)

thisisrobv 15y ago
Agreed, anything would be a step up from what they have now. Although I would imagine it's someone on their list of things to do.

chops 15y ago

Reminds me of the http://erldocs.com http://erldocs.com for Erlang documentation.

sebilasse 15y ago

One addition to the shortcuts: I instinctively tried to press RIGHT instead of ENTER to open category, and LEFT to close category.

missing_cipher 15y ago

Offline version sold me.

d0m 15y ago

I see the effort behind this project but I have to admit that I find it a bit useless. I've never had any problems finding anything related to jquery's documentation. I simply google and the top3 results is practically always the official documentation, a great stackoverflow answer, or a blog explaining in detail what I'm looking for. But, maybe it's just the way I work; I can understand that other developers might prefer to have a great resource that they can look up instead of randomly searching google.

d0m 15y ago
However, something I've struggled a little more related to jquery is finding and using the plugin. The official plugin website is really not optimal and it's hard to find the "best" plugin when you're looking for something. I guess an unofficial jquery plugin website where you could easily: 1- Find a couple of plugin that do what you want 2- Let you try the demo as fast as possible 3- Let you glance over the code, see comments and rating of others developers. 4- Have an easy and clear: Crash 30 sec installation 5- Give an access to the documentation. This is the order I usually execute when searching for a jquery plugin.. it's just that each of those steps are sometime unnecessary hard. I.e. multiple versions on the jquery, hard to find the real website of the plugin, have to look github issues to see other comments, demo page not working or deprecated, hard to see the "Installation and quick example", etc.
- markkanof 15y ago
  Yes, this is the real problem. The core jQuery documentation is nicely organized by category, and if I can't find something by browsing I can find it by using a Google search of the site. The plugins though are a mess. Any category I click on seems to have a huge list of options, some of which are great and some of which are sort of half finished and abandoned. Even if anyone could submit anything for display on the site, it might be nice to have an additional organizational layer on top that only shows a curated set of plugins. I just find something like http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ easier to browse through. I think most of the organizational concepts between the sites are the same, but there just seems to be less cruft there.
- 15y ago

jasonkester 15y ago

Please don't give me a collapsed tree of things that I need to dig through while trying to mentally unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places. Give me a list. Of everything. Or, if you absolutely feel you have to categorize things, give me a single "Uncollapse this mess" button so that I can look for the thing I'm looking for.

Omnipresent 15y ago
search text field works pretty nice to avoid going through the collapsed list
- joeyrobert 15y ago
  That is, if you know what you're searching for.
  - jacabado 15y ago
    What you are looking for is a knowledge pill! </sarcasm>
d0m 15y ago
"unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places." -> This is the official documentation; those categories are not the author's choice but the ones chosen by the jquery team. That would make no sense to have a list of 1000 random items not being categorized; just use the search. When you say "To use the search, I need to know what I'm looking for". Well, usually, when you search the documentation, it's because you know what you're searching for.. right? But then, I get that you might not know the "best keywords" to search what you're looking for. And, for that, it's so better to have smart category rather than a list of 1000 items. I mean, you're searching a way to post things using Ajax. You can search for ajax, you can search for post.. but you can quickly look at the categories and see Ajax; and then, instead of browsing through 1000 items, you only have to read a dozen.
- 15y ago

snissn 15y ago

You're just supposed to use this page: http://api.jquery.com/browser/ http://api.jquery.com/browser/ It formerly used to be accessible at api.jquery.com but then they changed some things around to confuse developers...

lmz 15y ago
That's not updated. Try searching for the toArray method[1] (new in 1.4). [1]: http://api.jquery.com/toArray/ http://api.jquery.com/toArray/
- seasoup 15y ago
  works for me.
  - function_seven 15y ago
    How did you find it? I can't. It looks like http://api.jquery.com/browser/ http://api.jquery.com/browser/ only works up to version 1.3

eiji 15y ago

Irony: Does not work with JavaScript disabled.

MartinCron 15y ago
I would expect it to be more ironic if it did work with JavaScript disabled. It's kind of hard to be a functional JQuery developer with JavaScript turned off all the time. It's like being a blind tour guide or a celibate porn star.
micmcg 15y ago
Thats not irony

mikey_p 15y ago

Nice, I just hope it stays up to date and the creators can turn their energy towards long term maintenance unlike http://visualjquery.com/ http://visualjquery.com/. Visual jQuery used to be my go to resource for years, until it became woefully out of date.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

Ugh. It is unusable in my iPad, which I very often use for browsing documentation when working on my laptop. The keyboard pops up every time a menu is selected because they menu events automatically selects the search box. I tried to leave feedback, but e User Voice overlay is also horridly broken on the iPad.

rmason 15y ago

I think that the correct ordering of documentation differs by how your brain functions. I am very visual and my favorite JQuery documentation is http://visualjquery.com/ http://visualjquery.com/ For the same reason I was best able to learn about using jQuery by using the sites here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript-visually.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript...

seasoup 15y ago

api.jquery.com This is the nicest documentation of any language I've ever used. The page loads, the cursor defaults to the search box, you type in what you are looking for and the browser hides searches that do not match and then you can use the arrow keys to go up and down then list to the one you want. As for the problem trying to find "is" just type "is(" if you are looking for the method itself.

andyford 15y ago

http://api.jquery.com/ http://api.jquery.com/ done

mjijackson 15y ago
Absolutely. In the opening paragraph the author states how difficult it is to find documentation for the .is() function. http://api.jquery.com/is http://api.jquery.com/is done.

jswank 15y ago

I've been using this last spring, initially as an offline reference when flying, etc. Since then, it's become my primary reference when working with jQuery. It's perfect for what I need: instantly looking up usage details for specific methods.