
Staying Current: Automating Copyright Year Updates
Automate copyright year updates across JavaScript, React, Angular, Vue, jQuery, PHP, and WordPress so footers do not go stale each January across stacks.
Articles
Solidly out of fashion now, jQuery was a feature‑rich JavaScript library which allowed an easy route for new developers to write JavaScript, without understanding the more nuanced aspects of the language.
Below you will find a subset of articles from my blog specifically about jQuery. This is an area I have worked with for many years, and it has been a regular subject in my writing. There are ten articles collected together for you below.

Automate copyright year updates across JavaScript, React, Angular, Vue, jQuery, PHP, and WordPress so footers do not go stale each January across stacks.

Why old jQuery plugins became front‑end debt, from hidden state and global CSS to accessibility gaps, browser assumptions, migration cost, and ownership.

Keep jQuery plugin usage maintainable with clear wrappers, option defaults, event names, lifecycle checks, CSS boundaries, ownership, and update notes.

Decide when a jQuery plugin is worth using, and when a small custom script is safer, clearer, easier to maintain, and less likely to leak assumptions.

Write small JavaScript behaviours that work without jQuery, covering selectors, classes, events, feature checks, fallbacks, and easier migration paths.
closest() in Vanilla JavaScript and jQueryUse closest() for DOM traversal in jQuery and vanilla JavaScript, replacing manual parent walking in menus, click handlers, and interactive UI cleanly.

Use jQuery as an enhancement layer while keeping links, forms, navigation, and core page content usable without JavaScript, late scripts, or plugin failure.
Handle click events in JavaScript with onclick and addEventListener, including vanilla alternatives to jQuery, event targets, and common interaction patterns.
Check whether an element exists with jQuery or vanilla JavaScript before running DOM code, avoiding null errors and fragile client‑side behaviour.
Opening a new browser window programmatically on‑click is very simple to achieve with jQuery, and no more complex to achieve with vanilla JavaScript too!