Question

Is there a difference between the following selectors:

var index = $(this).parent().index();
var index2 = $(this.parentNode).index();

From what I have read, parentNode is widely supported.

Is there a reason to use one over the other?

Answer 1

The jQuery .parent() selector selects the immediate parent of all the nodes in the node set. However, since in your example the node set is just one node $(this), there’s little practical difference.

This difference matters if you were to do something like $(".foo").parent(), where there might be many nodes that have the class foo.