Tip for jQuery & handheld device developers

This week’s usual “Friday short post” about using jQuery in handheld devices. If you are a developer who is using jQuery in applications that were developed for use in environments with small processing power such as handheld devices, mobile phones, PDA’s, etc. you will find this post useful.

Anyway, back to the topic. For whatever reasons you chose to use jQuery in your application (I would suggest using plain javascript for better performance) jQuery effects such as animation, hide and show, etc. most likely were probably one of the reasons. Unfortunately, jQuery effects are process intensive and in “slow” environments it is recommended to turn them off. Fortunately, jQuery provides you with such a method. It lets you disable all animations and effects by changing jQuery.fx.off setting to true.

// Dissable all effects
jQuery.fx.off = true;

// Shorthand
$.fx.off = true;

Now all your effects such as fadeIn(), fadeOut(), slideDown(), slideUp(), etc. will not be animated. They will simply be hidden and shown immediately (by changing CSS rules display:none; display:block;) to save CPU processing time.

NOTE:
By setting the jQuery.fx.off back to false you enable all animations and effects.