Difference between jQuery Production and jQuery Development?

Question

This question might sound stupid but pls be patient because I am a total beginner. I downloaded both jQuery versions, development and production. I want to know what is better for me to use as a beginner for studying jQuery.

Answer 1

If you are interested in the inner workings of jQuery, use the development version. Its source code is formatted nicely and documented/commented for a developer to refer to.

If you only want to learn how to use jQuery, refer to the manual instead.

The production version is a minified version of the same source file. This reduces the number of bytes taken up by the file, thereby saving bandwidth for production use in web apps as it gets served to a browser for use.

Answer 2

jQuery Production is compressed, jQuery Development is not. If you are learning jQuery, both library is the same unless you want to see the jQuery core code.

If you want to use it on your website, then you should use the Production version.

Answer 3

The production version is meant to be used in a working application. The development is by a developer while developing said application.

The development version is minimised. That means all extraneous whitespaces, including newlines, are removed. In contrast, the development version is just like how one normally writes a code. Variable names are more likely to be in full and each statements rests on its own line. This makes it much easier to debug as you can now put breakpoints on jQuery's code and inspect the variables.

To aid you in doing that (debug, that is), I recommend developing using Firefox with the Firebug plugin.