This book is not about bashing jQuery. Although I am personally very much in favor of directly utilizingwhat the browser and the JavaScript language provide, the primary purpose of this book is not necessarily tocompel developers to abandon all third-party solutions. This is not primarily a stage to host a competitionbetween jQuery and the web API. I have a great amount of respect for those who have maintained andsupported jQuery since its inception. I mean no disrespect to those associated with jQuery. In fact,similar arguments could be made about other libraries, such as underscore.js, lodash, or zepto.js. But theubiquitousness of jQuery makes it the most appropriate reference for this book.The purpose of this book is to teach you about the browser’s native tools. Of course, if you want tocontinue using jQuery, you may do so (not that you need my permission). This book will hopefully giveyou the confidence and knowledge you need to remove this dependency from your future projects, if youso choose. At the very least, by reading all of this, you will gain a better understanding of the web API andJavaScript as a language, which is important to your evolution as a web developer, whether you use jQueryor not. Although I do stress use of the native web API and JavaScript sans jQuery, my intention is not toencourage JavaScript as a solution to all problems. JavaScript and the web API are simply tools that may beused to solve some problems. CSS and proper use of HTML may be more appropriate solutions to some ofthese problems, as you will see later on.In addition to instilling confidence in new web developers and those a bit overwhelmed by thebrowser’s native API, Beyond jQuery has many other goals. I intend to teach you about the fundamentals,pitfalls, and best practices that are otherwise masked by jQuery. You will learn to perform commonoperations and solve common problems without the use of jQuery. I will also reveal why jQuery may havebeen necessary in the past, but is no longer needed with the advent of modern browsers and more evolvedweb and JavaScript specifications.When you finish this book, you will be able to write more efficient front-end code by examining someperformance issues historically associated with jQuery. Native alternatives are described as well. You willlearn more about the browser’s API, JavaScript, and even jQuery through detailed explanation and codeexamples. I demonstrate how common operations are performed using jQuery, and then solve the sameproblems using the web API and “vanilla” JavaScript. Beyond jQuery contains copious amounts of codesnippets, ranging from simple to complex, to help you understand how to develop something substantialwithout the crutch of a third-party library.I have also created a companion exercise for readers of this book, hosted in a GitHub repository at This project demonstrates a number of the techniques andnative APIs described throughout this book in a single comprehensive web application. Feel free to clone theexercise repository, run it yourself, and customize the code. Though the code itself is already annotated withhelpful comments, you may also ask questions about the exercise in the project’s issue tracker.