2.1. Introduction

At the very core of jQuery is its selector engine, allowing you to select elements within any document based on names, attributes, states, and more. Because of CSS’s popularity, it made sense to adopt its selector syntax to make it simple to select elements in jQuery. As well as supporting most of the selectors specified in the CSS 1–3 specifications, jQuery adds quite a few custom selectors that can be used to select elements based on special states and characteristics. Additionally, you can create your own custom selectors! This chapter discusses some of the more common problems encountered while selecting elements with jQuery.

Before the first recipe, let’s discuss a few basic principles.