Alternative jQuery Documentation

[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.

[uniclaude]

I really understand you point of view, since I guess I work in a similar manner. Now, I may find the downloadable version of this project really useful when I have to work offline, which happens more often than I would like to.

[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.

[Omnipresent]

search text field works pretty nice to avoid going through the collapsed list

[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?

[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...

[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.

[meatmanek]

Two finger scroll works, but still sucks.

[lhnz]

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

[Romme]

Not much similar, but still useful: http://pyth0n.org/

[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/

[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.

[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.

[missing_cipher]

Offline version sold me.

[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.

[micmcg]

Thats not irony