.delay() and .setTimeout()

Question

According to jQuery document on .delay(),

The .delay() method is best for delaying between queued jQuery effects. Because it is limited

Answer 1

You can use delay with animations, for example:

$('.message').delay(5000).fadeOut();

You can also use timeOut to delay the start of animations, for example:

window.setTimeout(function(){
  $('.message').fadeOut();
}, 5000);

As you see, it's easier to use delay than setTimeout with animations.

You can delay pretty much anything with setTimeout, but you can only delay animations with delay. Methods that aren't animations are not affected by delay, so this would not wait a while before hiding the element, it would hide it immediately:

$('.message').delay(5000).hide();