jQuery: What is the difference between deferred.always() and deferred.then()?

Question

Seems to me that both does the same thing.

Docs:

• deferred.always()

• deferred.then()

Answer 1

The big benefit of then (as of 1.8) is the capability to chain tasks explicitly because it returns a promise which will be resolved with the result of the callback(s)

Example from documentation:

var request = $.ajax( url, { dataType: "json" } ),
    chained = request.then(function( data ) {
      return $.ajax( url2, { data: { user: data.userId } } );
    });

chained.done(function( data ) {
  // data retrieved from url2 as provided by the first request
});