jQuery selector what's difference between jQuery(“element”) and $(“element”)?

Question

I used jQuery many times ago, but always used like this: $(document). Lately i seen many times somebody using jQuery(document), I don\'t know differenc

Answer 1

$ is just a short reference to the global jQuery object.

window.$ === window.jQuery // true

Most plugin authors make sure that the dollar sign really is referencing the jQuery object, by putting it into a self-invoking method.

(function( $ ) {
    // $(document)
}( jQuery ));

By invoking that anonymous method with the jQuery object as argument, we can access it within the method via $.

Answer 2

@jAndy provides a good explanation about $ and jQuery in general.

However for your specific problem, it seems that the plugin somehow makes $ unavailable, which either means that it overwrites $ with something else (unlikely) or that it calls jQuery.noConflict().

If it does, have a look why it is doing this. Maybe it includes another library that needs $ for its own working.

Usually, plugins should never assume that $ is available for them. @jAndy showed how to use $ if only jQuery is available.

In addition if you put all your own code in the ready handler, the first argument passed is the global jQuery object, so you can name the parameter as you want:

jQuery(function($) {
    // your code here
});