First look is always important, even when it is of your blog. If a visitor comes to your blog for the first time and is not that happy with the look, he will immediately click away and will never read the actual content (No matter how good or informative it may have been).
So, what to do? Obviously, you understand that a visually appealing website should do the trick for you, but, how to start? Everyone is not a designer, more importantly, when you are just starting things, you won’t have enough money to pay for a top rank designer. The only option is probably to use WordPress (Free, off course) and upload one of the amazing themes available. If you can afford, buying a premium theme will be great, otherwise, you can still choose from plenty of magnificent free themes available. That’s pretty much all about the basic set up. But, what will make your blog stand out from the rest? Use jQuery for your blog; it will just get to a new level look wise.
What is jQuery?
Well, jQuery is an open source cross-browser library for JavaScript code which is meant to achieve rather complex tasks, but is easy to use and requires less to no programming knowledge. Thanks to John Resig, jQuery saw the daylight first time in 2006 and since then, it has come a long way to become the most used JavaScript library today.
The advantages of using jQuery
Now, let’s discuss a few advantages of jQuery and why should you use this in your blog:
- Most importantly, look wise, jQuery takes your blog to a new level altogether. It works with Ajax and in all the major web browsers available such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc. Mainly, jQuery is used for drop-downs, sliders (Video or Images), drag and drop features etc. Through jQuery, several animation features such as Fade In, Fade Out, Slide In, Slide Out, Slide In Time, Fade Out Time etc. are achievable.
- With jQuery, the website load time gets reduced (Thanks to the little file size of jQuery). It has really less foot print. For executing jQuery the RAM consumption is very little and it helps the efficiency of the blog. Additionally, jQuery blogs are Search Engine friendly.
- There are plenty of jQuery plug-ins available in the market which you can use with WordPress. It’s just simple 3 steps to be undertaken: Download, Install and Activate. Some of the most popular jQuery plug-ins include: MagicToolBox, TinyTips, Masked Input, Media Plugin, Password Strength Meter, SliderGallery, Text2Pass, FancyBox, Highlight, jCrop, jQuery Infinite Carousel, jMagnify, jQuery Grid, jQuery Tabs etc.
- It’s extremely easy to use jQuery in blogs. Even a newbie can do this. Also, the code is easily maintainable and reusable, plus, jQuery is perfectly compatible with all versions of CSS as well.
Types of jQuery
Each jQuery file has two versions: Uncompressed and Minified. Based on your requirement, you can use either of the two. Uncompressed jQuery files are easier to understand, but it consumes a little more disk space than the Minified jQuery files. Minified ones on the other hand take less space & load faster; but, the code is compressed and it’s hard to understand.
Undoubtedly, introduction of jQuery has redefined web designing in the last decade and with more versions to follow, feature wise, only sky is the limit.
This guest article is written by Christofer. Christofer loves to write about web designing and tries to solve problems with his write-ups. He is also a contributor for the Clearwater Web Design company and if you want to have more information on this, please click here.
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