Using jQuery
As of Drupal version 5.0, most of what can be achieved with Javascript will be made possible by the jQuery Javascript library. To quote from the jQuery website:
jQuery is a new type of Javascript library. It is not a huge, bloated framework promising the best in AJAX - nor is it just a set of needlessly complex enhancements - jQuery is designed to change the way that you write Javascript.
Note: Most information about jQuery can and should be obtained from the jQuery website, this section of the handbook will avoid duplicating information better maintained there.
Resources on the web:
- jQuery: the official jQuery web site. See in particular:
- visual jquery: a graphically organized jquery reference
- Learning jQuery: a multi-author weblog with the aim of sharing information about jQuery
- Other more Drupal specific resources:
- Dojo Lesson #12 - jQuery Resurrected: their mission? To show how easy it is to take your Drupal site to the cutting edge of User Interface with jQuery, talk about the tools and resources that make this easy, and outline some best-practices for security. See also the drupal group discussion.
jquery doc link is for 1.2 - drupal isn't there yet
For other complete newcomers to the subject, a warning:
The documentation at docs.jquery.com - the site linked to by 'jQuery documentation' above - is for the current release of jQuery.
Drupal is very much not running the current release - Drupal 5.x particularly isn't. As best as I can tell, the current production release of 5.x includes jQuery 1.0.4. There are ways to upgrade that, but it seems that 1.1.3 is as far forward as you can go without compatibility problems.
Any links to documentation of the actual jQuery code we are running would be good to include here. I have found one that is helpful:
http://docs.jquery.com/API/1.1.2/DOM/Traversing/Selectors