

Alternative jQuery Documentation - sgallant
http://jqapi.com/

======
d0m
I see the effort behind this project but I have to admit that I find it a bit
useless. I've never had any problems finding anything related to jquery's
documentation. I simply google and the top3 results is practically always the
official documentation, a great stackoverflow answer, or a blog explaining in
detail what I'm looking for.

But, maybe it's just the way _I_ work; I can understand that other developers
might prefer to have a great resource that they can look up instead of
randomly searching google.

~~~
d0m
However, something I've struggled a little more related to jquery is finding
and using the plugin. The official plugin website is really not optimal and
it's hard to find the "best" plugin when you're looking for something.

I guess an unofficial jquery plugin website where you could easily:

    
    
      1- Find a couple of plugin that do what you want
     
      2- Let you try the demo as fast as possible 
     
      3- Let you glance over the code, see comments and rating of others developers. 
     
      4- Have an easy and clear: Crash 30 sec installation
     
      5- Give an access to the documentation.
    
    

This is the order I usually execute when searching for a jquery plugin.. it's
just that each of those steps are sometime unnecessary hard. I.e. multiple
versions on the jquery, hard to find the real website of the plugin, have to
look github issues to see other comments, demo page not working or deprecated,
hard to see the "Installation and quick example", etc.

~~~
vdm
I think what is needed is a (crowd-sourced) list of 'similar plugin' links,
using metric such as ratings or number of downloads for ranking.

This works on the Chrome Extensions website, you quickly skip over the
unmaintained plugins and the ones with no reviews.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en&category=ext](https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en&category=ext)

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jasonkester
Please don't give me a collapsed tree of things that I need to dig through
while trying to mentally unravel what logic might have been going through your
head when you put things in various places.

Give me a list. Of everything.

Or, if you absolutely feel you have to categorize things, give me a single
"Uncollapse this mess" button so that I can look for the thing I'm looking
for.

~~~
d0m
"unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put
things in various places." -> This is the official documentation; those
categories are not the author's choice but the ones chosen by the jquery team.

That would make no sense to have a list of 1000 random items not being
categorized; just use the search.

When you say "To use the search, I need to know what I'm looking for". Well,
usually, when you search the documentation, it's because you know what you're
searching for.. right?

But then, I get that you might not know the "best keywords" to search what
you're looking for. And, for that, it's so better to have smart category
rather than a list of 1000 items.

I mean, you're searching a way to post things using Ajax. You can search for
ajax, you can search for post.. but you can quickly look at the categories and
see _Ajax_ ; and then, instead of browsing through 1000 items, you only have
to read a dozen.

~~~
FlowerPower
A problem exists when you dont know what you want, then you dont know the
keywords or the category. And the questions you might ask about the problem
migth seem completley irrelevant to what you are trying to do.

I have been in such positions when learning JSF, seemingly simple things like
getting out a request parameter where not obvious, and when googling "request
parameter JSF" and all kinds of tricks I still did not get a satisfying
answer, only after reading more about JSF I realized it is just the wrong
thing to do any way.

If you're in such a position, you dont know what to search for but you think
you have a problem, then it is time to pick up a book and study.

------
illumen
Pretty cool. Could do with some tweaking and polishing still though.

Should be valid html. Back button is broken. There should be a home button top
left. The colours need tweaking for contrast, and I'm guessing other
accessability tweaks.

url search does not work. For example the url: <http://jqapi.com/ajax> returns
404. Really it should do a search for ajax and take me to that page or list
search results.

~~~
dclowd9901
"Should be valid html."

Am I alone in thinking this is a rather dated viewpoint?

~~~
kevindication
It's easy to see what's wrong with invalid HTML.

What's wrong with valid HTML?

~~~
dclowd9901
Interesting. My whole take was completely the opposite.

Browsers tend to have very little problem rendering invalid markup, and the
savings costs associated with invalid markup (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very
easily enumerated. So I would pose you this question:

What's wrong with invalid HTML, besides lack of some enigmatic adherence to
idealism?

~~~
rimantas

      > and the savings costs associated with invalid markup
      > (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated.
    

Please, enumerate. I guess you are not aware that a lot of things you consider
invalid are actually allowed in HTML: unquoted attributes, tags omission, etc.
This was allowed even in HTML4, HTML5 gives us even more options there.

Say, how would invalid markup help <http://kod.as/lab/valid/> be even smaller?
Sure, that is pretty meaningless document, but take a look at a source and you
will see some stuff that can be applied to normal sites. It's valid:
[http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2...](http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F)
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

You could remove DOCTYPE (which is very short compared to HTML4 or XHTML
versions), but then you'd throw your browsers to quirks mode, and that is a
pain. The whole purpose of DOCTYPE in HTML5 is to force standards-compliant
rendering mode, that's it.

And it only looks that browsers have little problems parsing invalid markup.
Making sense of tag soup parsing (and making it consistent) was one of the
major tasks for HTML5 people.

~~~
dclowd9901
I suppose I'm referring more to 4.01, since 5, as far as I know, doesn't
constitute the majority of websites. Things like nonstandard attribute tags
and wrapping inline elements around block elements. These are what I thought
of when I thought of "dated".

~~~
rimantas
Majority of websites can be converted to 5 just by replacing doctype.
Nonstandard attributed don't help you to save bytes though. Also, from what
I've seen sites which were built without even thought about validity and
standards tend to be of much lover quality and hence are more bloated: lots of
unnecessary div's, classes, wrappers, etc.

------
rmason
I think that the correct ordering of documentation differs by how your brain
functions.

I am very visual and my favorite JQuery documentation is
<http://visualjquery.com/>

For the same reason I was best able to learn about using jQuery by using the
sites here: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-
javascript...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript-
visually.php)

------
dwar
Looks quite promising, but horribly broken in the iPad Safari:

* Neither the ToC nor the content pane scroll. * Clicking a method link in the ToC pops up the keyboard which quickly gets annoying.

~~~
Saad_M
Also the Demo’s don’t seem to work either in Safari 5.05.

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lhnz
This is very nice. Any similar resources for Python documentation, etc...?

~~~
Romme
Not much similar, but still useful: <http://pyth0n.org/>

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SoftwareMaven
Ugh. It is unusable in my iPad, which I very often use for browsing
documentation when working on my laptop. The keyboard pops up every time a
menu is selected because they menu events automatically selects the search
box.

I tried to leave feedback, but e User Voice overlay is also horridly broken on
the iPad.

------
snissn
You're just supposed to use this page: <http://api.jquery.com/browser/> It
formerly used to be accessible at api.jquery.com but then they changed some
things around to confuse developers...

~~~
lmz
That's not updated. Try searching for the toArray method[1] (new in 1.4).

[1]: <http://api.jquery.com/toArray/>

~~~
seasoup
works for me.

~~~
function_seven
How did you find it? I can't. It looks like <http://api.jquery.com/browser/>
only works up to version 1.3

------
thisisblurry
Also worth taking a look at: <http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/>

It lets you quickly view how a particular jQuery function/method works.

------
seasoup
api.jquery.com

This is the nicest documentation of any language I've ever used. The page
loads, the cursor defaults to the search box, you type in what you are looking
for and the browser hides searches that do not match and then you can use the
arrow keys to go up and down then list to the one you want.

As for the problem trying to find "is" just type "is(" if you are looking for
the method itself.

------
sebilasse
One addition to the shortcuts:

I instinctively tried to press RIGHT instead of ENTER to open category, and
LEFT to close category.

------
chops
Reminds me of the <http://erldocs.com> for Erlang documentation.

------
mikey_p
Nice, I just hope it stays up to date and the creators can turn their energy
towards long term maintenance unlike <http://visualjquery.com/>.

Visual jQuery used to be my go to resource for years, until it became woefully
out of date.

------
jswank
I've been using this last spring, initially as an offline reference when
flying, etc. Since then, it's become my primary reference when working with
jQuery. It's perfect for what I need: instantly looking up usage details for
specific methods.

------
Meai
Would be nice if the sidebar was resizeable.

------
dimmuborgir
Have been using railsapi/sdoc for many months now. It's fantastic and I highly
recommend it.

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andyford
<http://api.jquery.com/> done

~~~
mjijackson
Absolutely. In the opening paragraph the author states how difficult it is to
find documentation for the .is() function.

<http://api.jquery.com/is>

done.

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missing_cipher
Offline version sold me.

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5a3k
If only there was something like this for jquery-mobile.. :)

~~~
thisisrobv
Agreed, anything would be a step up from what they have now. Although I would
imagine it's someone on their list of things to do.

------
eiji
Irony: Does not work with JavaScript disabled.

~~~
MartinCron
I would expect it to be more ironic if it did work with JavaScript disabled.

It's kind of hard to be a functional JQuery developer with JavaScript turned
off all the time. It's like being a blind tour guide or a celibate porn star.

