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Zepto vs jQuery: What are the differences?

Introduction

Zepto and jQuery are both popular JavaScript libraries that provide a wide range of functionalities for web development. While they have many similarities, there are also key differences that set them apart from each other.

  1. DOM Traversal and Manipulation: Zepto and jQuery both offer powerful and concise methods for DOM traversal and manipulation. However, jQuery provides a more extensive set of methods compared to Zepto, making it a more versatile choice for complex operations.

  2. Size and Performance: One notable difference between Zepto and jQuery is their size and performance. Zepto is significantly smaller in size compared to jQuery, making it more lightweight and faster to load. This advantage can be particularly beneficial for mobile web development, where the file size affects page load time.

  3. Browser Compatibility: jQuery is widely known for its excellent cross-browser compatibility. It handles various browser quirks and inconsistencies effectively, ensuring consistent behavior across different browsers. On the other hand, Zepto may have limited compatibility with less common or older browsers, which could be a consideration depending on your target audience.

  4. Plugin Ecosystem: jQuery has a massive and well-established plugin ecosystem, with a vast range of plugins available for almost any use case. The extensive community support and documentation make it easy to find and use plugins for extending jQuery's functionality. On the other hand, Zepto's plugin ecosystem is comparatively smaller and may not have as much developer support or availability.

  5. Animation and Effects: jQuery offers a more comprehensive set of built-in animation and effects methods. It provides a robust framework for creating smooth animations and transitions, making it an excellent choice for interactive websites. While Zepto also includes basic animation capabilities, it lacks some of the advanced features provided by jQuery.

  6. Development and Maintenance: jQuery has a long history and a large user base, making it a more established and well-maintained library. It is actively developed, with regular updates and bug fixes. Zepto, on the other hand, has a smaller community and may have less frequent updates and maintenance.

In summary, jQuery offers a broader range of features, better browser compatibility, and a more extensive plugin ecosystem compared to Zepto. However, Zepto shines in terms of size and performance, making it a suitable choice for mobile web development or projects with specific performance constraints.

Advice on jQuery and Zepto
Adan van Dijk
designer, programmer at Downdijk · | 10 upvotes · 23.7K views
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I use jQuery at the moment because I use it for a lot of years already, but now Bootstrap 5 decided to switch to JavaScript, I am thinking of switching to an alternative.

I use jQuery only for the DOM integration, animations and ajax calls because JavaScript calls to a class looks such a long call. I like the way of jQuery with $(document).on('click','.something',function() {});

By the way, I like to keep using HTML, PHP and Bootstrap as I do now.

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Replies (3)
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Hi Adan,

Javascript has changed quite a bit in the recent years and lot of it was inspired from jquery. Now almost all modern browsers support javascript syntax everything that jquery does with few elaborate / sometimes better alternatives. So, if you like to switch, find the equivalents of what portions of jquery you use and replace those parts. Btw, jquery is still nicer sometimes with its method chaining and a lot simpler syntax - the equivalent in js may not be that sugary syntactically.

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Othmane Agoulzi
Front-End Developer at Potfolio · | 4 upvotes · 12.3K views
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I was like you two years ago, used to jquery and didn't want to switch, but if you're willing to use js frameworks in your projects(React, Vuejs...), I advise you to switch asap, and get used to normal javascript, because in the end, it's the core language, but there are some new ways in it (especially in ES6) that will make your life easier, like you can replace the document.querySelector() with $() and document.querySelectorAll() with $$(), using this line of code: const $ = e => document.querySelector(e), $$ = e => document.querySelectorAll(e); then you can select a p element just by writing: $('p'), and multiple p elements like that: $$('p'). I hope my advice helped you in any way.

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I thinl javascript is a good choice

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Decisions about jQuery and Zepto
Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 9 upvotes · 62.7K views

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.

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Malek Boubakri
Web developer at Quicktext · | 0 upvote · 208K views

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?

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kazi shahin
CTO at Blubird Interactive Ltd. · | 3 upvotes · 101.1K views

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 ?

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Manatsawin Hanmongkolchai
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When I started TipMe, I thought about using React frontend. At the end, plain, simple jQuery won.

I had to build this iteration of the site fast and by using jQuery I could keep using Django as a full stack development tool. One important point is Django form (combined with Django Bootstrap3) means that I don't have to reinvent form rendering again, which will be the case with React.

Over time, more interactivity seeped into the site and React components start making its way into the codebase.

I now wish the site is built using React so that I could add more user friendly interfaces easier (no more fuddling with server states) but I would still say jQuery helped me get past those early days.

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Pros of jQuery
Pros of Zepto
  • 1.3K
    Cross-browser
  • 957
    Dom manipulation
  • 809
    Power
  • 660
    Open source
  • 610
    Plugins
  • 459
    Easy
  • 395
    Popular
  • 350
    Feature-rich
  • 281
    Html5
  • 227
    Light weight
  • 93
    Simple
  • 84
    Great community
  • 79
    CSS3 Compliant
  • 69
    Mobile friendly
  • 67
    Fast
  • 43
    Intuitive
  • 42
    Swiss Army knife for webdev
  • 35
    Huge Community
  • 11
    Easy to learn
  • 4
    Clean code
  • 3
    Because of Ajax request :)
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Nice
  • 2
    Just awesome
  • 2
    Used everywhere
  • 1
    Improves productivity
  • 1
    Javascript
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Open Source, Simple, Easy Setup
  • 1
    It Just Works
  • 1
    Industry acceptance
  • 1
    Allows great manipulation of HTML and CSS
  • 1
    Widely Used
  • 1
    I love jQuery
  • 5
    Lightweight

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Cons of jQuery
Cons of Zepto
  • 6
    Large size
  • 5
    Sometimes inconsistent API
  • 5
    Encourages DOM as primary data source
  • 2
    Live events is overly complex feature
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    What is jQuery?

    jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

    What is Zepto?

    While 100% jQuery coverage is not a design goal, the APIs provided match their jQuery counterparts. The goal is to have a ~5-10k modular library that downloads and executes fast, with a familiar and versatile API, so you can concentrate on getting stuff done.

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    What companies use Zepto?
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    What are some alternatives to jQuery and Zepto?
    Bootstrap
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    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
    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.
    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.
    jQuery Mobile
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