Selectors in jQuery

By Rebecca | February 5, 2008

categories: jquery

Just a note to self: Quick Tip - Optimizing DOM Traversal. Avoid bare classname selectors like $('.foo') when possible; qualify them with an element type or, ideally, the ID of a parent element: $('div.foo') or $('#bar .foo').

One Response to “Selectors in jQuery”

  1. Jörn Zaefferer says:
    March 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    The great fun of optimizations like that: Once a browser implements document.getElementsByClassName, the plain-class version is most likely way faster than your qualified one. And less flexible. Can’t just change a span to a div when it breaks your optimized selector.

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