What's the difference between '$(this)' and 'this'?

Question

I am currently working through this tutorial: Getting Started with jQuery

For the two examples below:

$(\"#orderedlist\").find(\"li\").each(function          


        

Answer 1

Yes you only need $() when you're using jQuery. If you want jQuery's help to do DOM things just keep this in mind.

$(this)[0] === this

Basically every time you get a set of elements back jQuery turns it into a jQuery object. If you know you only have one result, it's going to be in the first element.

$("#myDiv")[0] === document.getElementById("myDiv");

And so on...