Table of Contents
Until now, we’ve been dealing entirely with methods that are called on a jQuery object. For example:
$('h1').remove();
Most jQuery methods are called on jQuery objects as shown above;
these methods are said to be part of the $.fn namespace, or
the “jQuery prototype,” and are best thought of as jQuery object
methods.
However, there are several methods that do not act on a selection; these methods are said to be part of the jQuery namespace, and are best thought of as core jQuery methods.
This distinction can be incredibly confusing to new jQuery users. Here’s what you need to remember:
Methods called on jQuery selections are in the $.fn
namespace, and automatically receive and return the selection as
this.
Methods in the $ namespace are generally
utility-type methods, and do not work with selections; they are not
automatically passed any arguments, and their return value will
vary.
There are a few cases where object methods and core methods have the
same names, such as $.each and $.fn.each. In
these cases, be extremely careful when reading the documentation that you
are exploring the correct method.
Copyright Rebecca Murphey, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.