What does $(function() {} ); do?

Question

$(function() { ... });

is just jQuery short-hand for

$(document).ready(function() { ... });

What it's designed to do (amongst other things) is ensure that your function is called once all the DOM elements of the page are ready to be used.

However, I don't think that's the problem you're having - can you clarify what you mean by 'Somehow, some functions are cannot be called and I have to call those function inside' ? Maybe post some code to show what's not working as expected ?

Edit: Re-reading your question, it could be that your function is running before the page has finished loaded, and therefore won't execute properly; putting it in $(function) would indeed fix that!

The following is a jQuery function call:

$(...);

Which is the "jQuery function." $ is a function, and $(...) is you calling that function.

The first parameter you've supplied is the following:

function() {}

The parameter is a function that you specified, and the $ function will call the supplied method when the DOM finishes loading.

It's just shorthand for $(document).ready(), as in:

$(document).ready(function() {
  YOUR_CODE_HERE
});

Sometimes you have to use it because your function is running before the DOM finishes loading.

Everything is explained here: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Introducing_$(document).ready()

I think you may be confusing Javascript with jQuery methods. Vanilla or plain Javascript is something like:

function example() {
}

A function of that nature can be called at any time, anywhere.

jQuery (a library built on Javascript) has built in functions that generally required the DOM to be fully rendered before being called. The syntax for when this is completed is:

$(document).ready(function() {
});

So a jQuery function, which is prefixed with the $ or the word jQuery generally is called from within that method.

$(document).ready(function() {        
    // Assign all list items on the page to be the  color red.  
    //      This does not work until AFTER the entire DOM is "ready", hence the $(document).ready()
    $('li').css('color', 'red');   
});

The pseudo-code for that block is:

When the document object model $(document) is ready .ready(), call the following function function() { }. In that function, check for all <li>'s on the page $('li') and using the jQuery method .CSS() to set the CSS property "color" to the value "red" .css('color', 'red');