Question

On the jQuery site, the description for $(callback) was that it behaves the same as $(document).ready(function) but then the examples showed some differences between the two syntaxes. So I was wondering, does anyone know exactly what the differences between the two are?

Answer 1

There are no differences, and the docs don’t show any difference:

All three of the following syntaxes are equivalent:

• $(document).ready(handler)
• $().ready(handler) (this is not recommended)
• $(handler)

Straight from: http://api.jquery.com/ready/

I think you are confused by the example showing jQuery(function($){ ... });
Which is just a way of calling $(handler), with no $ conflict.

IE.

// Here `$` is used by another library
jQuery(function($){
    // Here `$` refers to jQuery
});