Overview

jQuery

Stacks195.3K

Followers70.6K

Votes6.6K

GitHub Stars59.6K

Forks20.5K

Zepto

Stacks296

Followers71

Votes5

GitHub Stars15.3K

Forks3.9K

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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Advice on jQuery, Zepto

Adan

designer, programmer at Downdijk

Aug 8, 2021

Needs adviceon

jQuery

Bootstrap

JavaScript

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.

28.8k views28.8k

Comments

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.

72.4k views72.4k

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

Detailed Comparison

jQuery	Zepto
jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.	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.
-	zepto - Core module; contains most methods;event - Event handling via on() & off();ajax - XMLHttpRequest and JSONP functionality;form - Serialize & submit web forms;ie - Add support for Internet Explorer 10+ on desktop and Windows Phone 8.;detect - Provides $.os and $.browser information;fx - The animate() method;fx_methods - Animated show, hide, toggle, and fade*() methods.;assets - Experimental support for cleaning up iOS memory after removing image elements from the DOM.;data - A full-blown data() method, capable of storing arbitrary objects in memory.;deferred - Provides $.Deferred promises API. Depends on the "callbacks" module. ;When included, $.ajax() supports a promise interface for chaining callbacks.;callbacks - Provides $.Callbacks for use in "deferred" module.;selector - Experimental jQuery CSS extensions support for functionality such as $('div:first') and el.is(':visible').;touch - Fires tap and swipe–related events on touch devices. This works with both `touch` (iOS, Android) and `pointer` events (Windows Phone).;gesture - Fires pinch gesture events on touch devices;stack - Provides andSelf & end() chaining methods;ios3 - String.prototype.trim and Array.prototype.reduce methods (if they are missing) for compatibility with iOS 3.x.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 59.6K	GitHub Stars 15.3K
GitHub Forks 20.5K	GitHub Forks 3.9K
Stacks 195.3K	Stacks 296
Followers 70.6K	Followers 71
Votes 6.6K	Votes 5
Pros & Cons
Pros 1263 Cross-browser 957 Dom manipulation 809 Power 660 Open source 610 Plugins Cons 6 Large size 5 Sometimes inconsistent API 5 Encourages DOM as primary data source 2 Live events is overly complex feature	Pros 5 Lightweight

What are some alternatives to jQuery, Zepto?

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.

Riot

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

Marko

Marko is a really fast and lightweight HTML-based templating engine that compiles templates to readable Node.js-compatible JavaScript modules, and it works on the server and in the browser. It supports streaming, async rendering and custom tags.

Kendo UI

Fast, light, complete: 70+ jQuery-based UI widgets in one powerful toolset. AngularJS integration, Bootstrap support, mobile controls, offline data solution.