D3.js vs jQuery

Overview

jQuery

Stacks195.3K

Followers70.6K

Votes6.6K

GitHub Stars59.6K

Forks20.5K

D3.js

Stacks2.0K

Followers1.7K

Votes653

GitHub Stars111.7K

Forks22.9K

D3.js vs jQuery: What are the differences?

1. Purpose and Focus: D3.js is primarily a data visualization library that focuses on the binding of data to the Document Object Model (DOM). It provides a way to create interactive and dynamic visualizations using web standards like HTML, CSS, and SVG. On the other hand, jQuery is a general-purpose JavaScript library that simplifies the manipulation and traversal of HTML documents, event handling, and AJAX interactions.
2. Learning Curve: D3.js has a steeper learning curve as it requires a good understanding of web technologies and concepts like SVG, HTML, and CSS. It provides a low-level, direct approach to manipulating the DOM and requires more code to achieve specific tasks. In contrast, jQuery has a shallower learning curve as it abstracts away many of the complexities of web development and provides a simpler, more intuitive syntax.
3. Modularity and Extensibility: D3.js is highly modular and allows for fine-grained control over individual elements of a visualization. It provides a wide range of reusable components and plugins that can be customized and extended to meet specific requirements. jQuery, on the other hand, is less modular and more monolithic in nature, offering a set of predefined methods and functions that cover common use cases.
4. Supported Browsers: D3.js is designed to work on modern browsers that support SVG, HTML5, and CSS3. Older browsers may have limited or no support for D3.js features. jQuery, on the other hand, has a broader browser compatibility and can work on older browsers as well.
5. Performance and Efficiency: D3.js is known for its superior performance and efficiency in handling large datasets and complex visualizations. It leverages the power of web standards like SVG and CSS transitions to optimize rendering and provide smooth animations. jQuery, while capable of handling smaller datasets, may struggle with complex visualizations and may not offer the same level of performance as D3.js.
6. Community and Ecosystem: D3.js has a strong and active community with a wide range of resources, documentation, and examples available. It is widely used in the data visualization community and has a vibrant ecosystem of plugins and extensions. jQuery, being a more general-purpose library, has an even larger community and ecosystem with a plethora of plugins and resources covering various aspects of web development.

In Summary, D3.js is a powerful data visualization library with a steeper learning curve, modular and extendable architecture, browser-specific requirements, superior performance, and a vibrant community. jQuery, on the other hand, is a general-purpose library with a shallower learning curve, broader browser compatibility, and a larger ecosystem of plugins and resources covering different aspects of web development.

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Advice on jQuery, D3.js

Peter

Senior Software Engineer

Sep 20, 2020

Decided

I have made an extended effort to drop frameworks completely if they are not actually needed. While I still use JS Frameworks like Vue, Angular and React ( if I have too ), I see far too often devs / teams deciding to build a single page site entirely in a framework, rather than just using HTML, CSS and a little JS.

I personally feel it's important to know when a framework is a good solution, and maybe when it's overkill.

72.5k views72.5k

Comments

Malek

Web developer at Quicktext

Mar 28, 2020

Decided

The project is a web gadget previously made using vanilla script and JQuery, It is a part of the "Quicktext" platform and offers an in-app live & customizable messaging widget. We made that remake with React eco-system and Typescript and we're so far happy with results. We gained tons of TS features, React scaling & re-usabilities capabilities and much more!

What do you think?

244k views244k

Comments

kazi

CTO at Blubird Interactive Ltd.

Mar 11, 2020

Decided

I've an eCommerce platform building using Laravel, MySQL and jQuery. It's working good and if anyone become interested, I just deploy the entire source cod e in environment / Hosting. This is not a good model of course. Because everyone ask for small or large amount of change and I had to do this. Imagine when there will be 100 separate deploy and I had to manage 100 separate source.
So How do I make my system architecture so that I'll have a core / base source code. To make any any change / update on specific deployment, it will be theme / plugin / extension based . Also if I introduce an API layer then I could handle the Web, Mobile App and POS as well ? Is the API should be part of source code or a individual single API and all the deployment will use that API ?

115k views115k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

jQuery	D3.js
jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.	It is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Emphasises on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework.
-	Declarative Approach for Individual Nodes Manipulation; Functions Factory; Web Standards; Built-in ELement Inspector to Debug; Uses SVG, Canvas, and HTML; Data-driven approach to DOM Manipulation; Voronoi Diagrams; Maps and topo.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 59.6K	GitHub Stars 111.7K
GitHub Forks 20.5K	GitHub Forks 22.9K
Stacks 195.3K	Stacks 2.0K
Followers 70.6K	Followers 1.7K
Votes 6.6K	Votes 653
Pros & Cons
Pros 1263 Cross-browser 957 Dom manipulation 809 Power 660 Open source 610 Plugins Cons 6 Large size 5 Encourages DOM as primary data source 5 Sometimes inconsistent API 2 Live events is overly complex feature	Pros 195 Beautiful visualizations 103 Svg 92 Data-driven 81 Large set of examples 61 Data-driven documents Cons 11 Beginners cant understand at all 6 Complex syntax
Integrations
No integrations available	JavaScript React Native AngularJS React Bootstrap

What are some alternatives to jQuery, D3.js?

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Svelte

If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

Flux

Flux is the application architecture that Facebook uses for building client-side web applications. It complements React's composable view components by utilizing a unidirectional data flow. It's more of a pattern rather than a formal framework, and you can start using Flux immediately without a lot of new code.

Famo.us

Famo.us is a free and open source JavaScript platform for building mobile apps and desktop experiences. What makes Famo.us unique is its JavaScript rendering engine and 3D physics engine that gives developers the power and tools to build native quality apps and animations using pure JavaScript.

Highcharts

Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie, scatter, angular gauges, arearange, areasplinerange, columnrange, bubble, box plot, error bars, funnel, waterfall and polar chart types.

Plotly.js

It is a standalone Javascript data visualization library, and it also powers the Python and R modules named plotly in those respective ecosystems (referred to as Plotly.py and Plotly.R). It can be used to produce dozens of chart types and visualizations, including statistical charts, 3D graphs, scientific charts, SVG and tile maps, financial charts and more.

Riot

Riot brings custom tags to all browsers. Think React + Polymer but with enjoyable syntax and a small learning curve.

Related Comparisons

D3.js vs jQuery: What are the differences?

1. Purpose and Focus: D3.js is primarily a data visualization library that focuses on the binding of data to the Document Object Model (DOM). It provides a way to create interactive and dynamic visualizations using web standards like HTML, CSS, and SVG. On the other hand, jQuery is a general-purpose JavaScript library that simplifies the manipulation and traversal of HTML documents, event handling, and AJAX interactions.
2. Learning Curve: D3.js has a steeper learning curve as it requires a good understanding of web technologies and concepts like SVG, HTML, and CSS. It provides a low-level, direct approach to manipulating the DOM and requires more code to achieve specific tasks. In contrast, jQuery has a shallower learning curve as it abstracts away many of the complexities of web development and provides a simpler, more intuitive syntax.
3. Modularity and Extensibility: D3.js is highly modular and allows for fine-grained control over individual elements of a visualization. It provides a wide range of reusable components and plugins that can be customized and extended to meet specific requirements. jQuery, on the other hand, is less modular and more monolithic in nature, offering a set of predefined methods and functions that cover common use cases.
4. Supported Browsers: D3.js is designed to work on modern browsers that support SVG, HTML5, and CSS3. Older browsers may have limited or no support for D3.js features. jQuery, on the other hand, has a broader browser compatibility and can work on older browsers as well.
5. Performance and Efficiency: D3.js is known for its superior performance and efficiency in handling large datasets and complex visualizations. It leverages the power of web standards like SVG and CSS transitions to optimize rendering and provide smooth animations. jQuery, while capable of handling smaller datasets, may struggle with complex visualizations and may not offer the same level of performance as D3.js.
6. Community and Ecosystem: D3.js has a strong and active community with a wide range of resources, documentation, and examples available. It is widely used in the data visualization community and has a vibrant ecosystem of plugins and extensions. jQuery, being a more general-purpose library, has an even larger community and ecosystem with a plethora of plugins and resources covering various aspects of web development.

D3.js vs jQuery

Overview