Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of jQuery. I announced it back at BarCamp NYC 2006 when I was still in college. It’s incredible to think of how far it’s come and just how many people have contributed to its success. To them I am forever grateful, thank you.
Last year I wrote up an annotated version of the original jQuery release in which I dumped many of my thoughts regarding the work and influences that went into that very first release.
It’s fascinating to see what place jQuery continues to hold in the world of web development. When I originally created the library I wanted to scratch two personal itches: 1) To provide a simple interface for interacting with the DOM and 2) Reduce the number of cross-browser issues that exist during development. Thankfully we now live in a world which is much rosier than back in 2005, when I was writing jQuery. Most users are on evergreen browsers and most have access to the recent standards-specified technology. It pleases me that there is apparently still a place for simple API design in the world, as jQuery’s continued success attests. jQuery is more popular than ever, surprisingly enough! 77.8% of the top million web site on the web use it, which is astounding.
When I stepped down from the project in 2011, to focus on my transition to working at Khan Academy, a fantastic team stepped up to ensure that the project would continue to run smoothly. Reading Sebastian McKenzie’s recent blog post about the struggles he’s faced in running the popular Babel project struck close to home for me. It made me glad that I had put time and effort into building a team of amazing people who were happy to take over the project once I stepped down. jQuery would not be in the place it is today without them.
I’m thankful that jQuery gave me the opportunity to meet so many new people and work on the things that I’m most passionate about. However I’m most happy that it’s empowered so many people to build things on the web, I’m so glad to have been a part of it all. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be another 10 years from now!
Miguel Galante (January 14, 2016 at 1:42 pm)
Thanks for all your work. I start my coding journey many years ago with jQuery 1.2. Since then I made a lot of great things and I became a full time front end developer.
Ratna Dinakar (January 14, 2016 at 2:06 pm)
Thank you for the wonderful work.. ! And yes can’t wait to see what JQuery offers in future…
Roberto Civille Rodrigues (January 14, 2016 at 2:13 pm)
Your positive impact on web development is undeniably great! Congratulations and thanks for everything! :)
Mischa Molhoek (January 14, 2016 at 2:24 pm)
Thank you indeed! Also loved your ninja book! Keep going!
Andrew Chalkley (January 14, 2016 at 2:24 pm)
Thank you for your insanely awesome contributions to the web industry!
John Chacko (January 14, 2016 at 2:26 pm)
Thank you for your contribution to web.
Nej Kutcharian (January 14, 2016 at 2:35 pm)
Thank you for all your hard work though I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since it’s release, I guess time flies when you’re having fun building (thanks to jQuery).
Mario Diaz (January 14, 2016 at 2:49 pm)
Thank you indeed! Keep going!
Anonymous (January 14, 2016 at 3:08 pm)
Only got into web dev around 2008, didn’t realize JQuery was around before that, I started on desktop apps.
Putting myself in your position, I cannot imagine how the adoption must feel today – it has really been at the core of any web work I have done, I am most grateful of your work – it has been an immense help in learning what is a complex subject.
It’s amazing how with all the changes over the years, JQuery has and still is at that core, you should be proud :)
Again, thank you for your work :)
DGB (January 14, 2016 at 3:19 pm)
I just started reading your blog from the very beginning as part of my effort to get better at JavaScript (I’m up to page 24 now). It was absolutely fascinating reading about jQuery’s inception and how much you grew through that project. You’ve certainly inspired me to be a better, more passionate developer. Thank you. And thank you for keeping all the old blog posts up! It’s like an archive of a subsection of the history of the web :D
Jack (January 14, 2016 at 3:22 pm)
You’ve always been the inspiration for my OS work. Thanks for thinking clearly in a period when web development was still so murky.
Scott (January 14, 2016 at 3:27 pm)
In large part, I owe the past 8 years of my career to having experience in jQuery and, thus, to you good sir!
Horst Gutmann (January 14, 2016 at 3:27 pm)
Time really flies! I think I’ve stumbled over jQuery not short after your presentation thanks to some friendly bloggers and was amazed by how less troublesome doing dynamic website (I guess, the term “DHTML” was already antiquated back then) could and can be :-D
Big thanks for all your work with jQuery and also to all those fine folks who helped keep it fresh over its 10 years so far!
gh (January 14, 2016 at 3:59 pm)
long live!
sdo (January 14, 2016 at 4:31 pm)
Thanks very much for the tool. It has become the must to have lib in all the web apps that I have built.
fwsue (January 14, 2016 at 4:35 pm)
Happy Anniversary, jQuery! I have much admiration for you, John, and thank you.
Igor Zaporozhets (January 14, 2016 at 4:47 pm)
You are a talented one, John.
Good luck.
Tamás (January 14, 2016 at 5:07 pm)
Thank you John, and the entire jQuery team for your work. You’ve truly changed an entire industry.
J Hendler (January 14, 2016 at 5:54 pm)
Thanks John! Been a part of my career and ability to deliver great experiences.
Will Moore (January 14, 2016 at 6:32 pm)
Thank you so much for jQuery – allowed me and many others to get into Javascript development. And thanks for the inspiring github streak!
KIM (January 14, 2016 at 7:15 pm)
thanks john. you give me a lot of inspiration.
Bojan Petkovski (January 14, 2016 at 7:24 pm)
Thank You John and Happy Birthday jQuery!!!
Alexander Nnamdi A. (January 14, 2016 at 9:00 pm)
Thank You so much for the great work done, I have been using jQuery for over five years now and it has inspired me in a lot of ways to build special frameworks that just sits on top of it, making jQuery act like c and my framework like c++.
Great Work Keep It Up ……..
Fred (January 14, 2016 at 9:30 pm)
Thank you for making the Web bearable since 10 years ago, John!
Jignesh Parmar (January 14, 2016 at 9:40 pm)
Happy 10th anniversary jquery. A big thank you to you John and the whole team. You made the web and the world a whole lot better place to be :)
KV Prajapati (January 14, 2016 at 9:59 pm)
Thank you and thank you jQuery Team.
Zack (January 14, 2016 at 10:02 pm)
Thanks for your great work, you saved us a lot of time dealing with browser compatibility.
Scott Jehl (January 14, 2016 at 10:18 pm)
Congrats, John! Wow, 10 years went fast! Thanks for convincing me try this little script out and see how it compared to mootools. :) certainly has been a fun ride, friend
Dreamweiver (January 14, 2016 at 10:20 pm)
jQuery has been the most powerfull tool ever in web technology, over the years it has the impact jQuery has made in web development is tremendous.
jquery has been the base for countless no of js plugins/framework and it will be for coming years too.
Thanks for all your effort buddy.
Jonathan Roy (January 14, 2016 at 11:22 pm)
Bravo John on building such a useful library. It is truly powering the web. I believe jQuery has become almost bigger than JavaScript. People look for jQuery solutions to problems easily doable in raw JS. This is a true testament to its popularity.
Qi Chen (January 14, 2016 at 11:34 pm)
Congratulations!.
You and jQuery together make the web different.
Smit (January 14, 2016 at 11:43 pm)
Congratulations!
Thank You for all your work..
Orkhan (January 15, 2016 at 12:12 am)
thanks for making world better
dsg (January 15, 2016 at 12:15 am)
It is incredible that JQuery turned 10 so soon! I guess time does pass fast when you are having fun. I can’t imagine front end without JQuery, thanks a lot to you and your team for your marvellous efforts! :)
Roshan Bhttarai (January 15, 2016 at 2:10 am)
Thank you for creating jQuery. I become JavaScript hater to JavaScript lover because of jQuery.
Web Development might not have been so much fun without it.
Thank you millions times for creating it :)
Rami (January 15, 2016 at 2:50 am)
jQuery pushed the web forward like no other library out there .. seriously! thank you jQuery <3.
Bernie (January 15, 2016 at 3:29 am)
Happy birthday!!!
jQuery is so cool that could (should) be merged to JavaScript language.
I wish you the most successful present and future.
Humberto Gomez Lopez (January 15, 2016 at 3:40 am)
You will always be our first one ;)
Giovanni Filardo (January 15, 2016 at 4:16 am)
Way to go, John!
Thank you so much for jQuery, I remember I was really impressed by the elegance of its API and learned so much by perusing the source code. Keep on rocking!
Francesco Panciroli (January 15, 2016 at 4:27 am)
Thank you, John, for your everlasting jQuery!
Luigi Tenti (January 15, 2016 at 5:21 am)
Happy birthday jQuery and thank you John for the absolute quality of all your contributions to IT!
Ji Gang (January 15, 2016 at 5:30 am)
Thank you, John. Happy birthday, jQuery
JB Demonte (January 15, 2016 at 5:43 am)
A big thanks!
jQuery helped a lot to level up the js development.
I started to use it around the 1.1-1.2 (as far as i remember, the 1.2.6 stayed a long on our production platform) end it’s still one of my favorite tech.
Pleased to see you continue to work on it, after a so long personal investment.
Best
Mars Wong (January 15, 2016 at 5:46 am)
it should be in the annal of history^_^
Ramiro (January 15, 2016 at 7:15 am)
Thanks a lot for starting jQuery and making it free and open source! Whenever I see people complaining about jQuery, I’d like to send them back to the dark ages of JavaScript development to make them realize what hugely positive impact this library has had on web development and the JavaScript language itself. jQuery is a game changer you can be proud of and so can the people who continue working on this awesome software!
Nashwan Doaqann (January 15, 2016 at 9:14 am)
Happy birthday jQuery!. jQuery had make a big change in the web development. Thank you John, you have to be proud!. :)
Ram Chiranjeevi (January 15, 2016 at 10:45 am)
Thanks a lot for the wonderful library jQuery. I love jQuery personally because I started to work on the web using jQuery. Since then I fell in love with DOM and JavaScript. Now for more than 5 years I am full time front end web developer fully using jQuery.
Jonathan Barronville (January 15, 2016 at 11:32 am)
Thank you so much for jQuery, John!
Mark Matyas (January 15, 2016 at 11:47 am)
Congrats on the milestone!
Alexandre Pardo (January 15, 2016 at 12:44 pm)
Thank you! Thank you very much for share jQuery!
Hervé Séger (January 15, 2016 at 1:03 pm)
Hi John.
jQuery was a brilliant idea.
You made the web development so much easier in this dark era where we had sites with tags such as: ‘Works best with Internet Explorer’.
You and the jQuery team rock!
A very grateful developer.
Haq (January 15, 2016 at 1:36 pm)
You revolutionized how people do web development in a positive way. Easy to use API that’s cross browser compatible. Angufail has tried to replace the value it brings but is horribly flawed and difficult to use correctly.
Danie Lamb (January 15, 2016 at 1:39 pm)
Thank you for taking the time to annotate the original code, fun to read through it.
https://github.com/daniellmb/jquery-archive
Andy (January 15, 2016 at 3:10 pm)
Thank you for contributing such a valuable project to the open web! jQuery is the first step into proper JavaScript for a lot of people, myself included. :)
Jazzcript (January 15, 2016 at 4:39 pm)
You are our Javascript Hero. Thank you very much for good.
Ciro Peixoto (January 15, 2016 at 7:35 pm)
congratulations!!!
You’re so young and so bright…
his work is an example for all!!!
fisherman (January 16, 2016 at 8:22 am)
thanks a lot..
Olumide (January 16, 2016 at 3:01 pm)
Wao! Happy birthday John and jQuery. Jquery like a lamp illuminated the web. It resuscitated JavaScript at the time it was going down and put it at a high pedestal. I personally had made great apps with jquery. I love jquery. Thanks, John for making a great change to the IT World.
casivaagustin (January 16, 2016 at 5:35 pm)
Thank you John, Thank you !
Weijie JIN (January 17, 2016 at 9:44 am)
Thank you!
Rishul (January 17, 2016 at 11:21 pm)
A group of terrorists made IE 8 and John made jQuery. Thanks for it.
Madhu (January 17, 2016 at 11:30 pm)
Hi John, i am glad Jquery is playing vital role in web world expecting more from it. :-)
Nitin W (January 18, 2016 at 2:30 am)
I will say, the world of web is nothing without jQuery. You will find it in everywhere. Thanks for this lovely gift to web world
Shrikant (January 18, 2016 at 3:21 am)
Congratulations! And thank you for giving us jQuery!
Helena (January 18, 2016 at 5:15 am)
Thank you for jQuery! You can change Javascript world forever!
Amol Nirmala Waman (January 18, 2016 at 6:05 am)
Thank you for saving our years! Hope to see template feature in jQuery :)
steveh (January 18, 2016 at 8:46 am)
Some have predicted that as the number of cross-browser issues decline, the popularity of jQuery would decline.
I think this analysis is false and only considers one dimension of jQuery.
Another dimension – which I personally adore – is the simple consistent means it provides for interacting with the dom for a whole range of important use cases.
Long live jQuery!
Tiji (January 18, 2016 at 12:27 pm)
JQuery has indeed come a long way now. I still remember using it for the very first time. It’s been 8 years since then, journey with jQuery has been amazing.
Nikola Malich (January 19, 2016 at 11:06 am)
jQuery is/was a cooperative powerhouse of a community and library which helped shape the modern web as we know it. The team & community helped drive the innovation & standardization of numerous things we now take for granted. Kudos to the jQuery team & community! I’ll always miss the old Google Groups days… ;)
Francis Kim (January 20, 2016 at 6:22 am)
jQuery saved JavaScript!
Thom Patterson (January 20, 2016 at 11:30 am)
I learned jQuery back on 1.2 and have used it in almost all of my projects since. Thank you!
jamesanthony (January 21, 2016 at 2:29 am)
thank you! john
Chris Fan (January 21, 2016 at 11:48 pm)
Congratulations and thank you!
??? (January 22, 2016 at 12:46 am)
Thanks for the great work.
We have been writing less and doing more by using JQuery.????????
song (January 22, 2016 at 1:53 am)
Thank you Jquery Team,thank you john.
President of US (January 22, 2016 at 10:01 am)
I started my career as a developer long back. jQuery is the life blood of any developer.
Bailey Zhang (January 25, 2016 at 12:25 am)
Thank you for your great work!
Mr. Brock Peters (January 27, 2016 at 5:58 pm)
Hi John,
I just want to thank you for creating this amazing software, that made it easier for people to get into JavaScript and, not only that, but changing world. Even though the technology has been superseded by other technologies you can’t deny that jQuery just works, it’s been proven and tested and has given countless developers such as as myself a way to make a living.
Thank you John,
God Bless you and your family.