Managing the Element Selection

Abstract

Most of the time, you use jQuery in a pretty distinct two-step pattern. The first step is to select some elements, and the second step is to perform one or more operations on those elements. In this chapter, I focus on the first step, showing you how to take control of the jQuery selection and tailor it to your exact needs. I’ll also show you how to use jQuery to navigate the DOM. In both cases, you start with one selection and perform operations on it until it contains just the elements you require. As you’ll see, the correlation between the elements you start with and those you finish with can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like.