Question

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Performance difference between jQuery's .live('click', fn) and .click(fn)

Does jQuery live() / delegate() affect significantly performance?

$('a').live('click', ...

$('a').click(... <== is this faster? and how much?

Answer 1

The answer is that it depends:

• click will be faster for few elements. You’ll have one bound function for each element, but no overhead for other clicks.
• delegate is faster for many elements. There’s only one event handler being bound, even for hundreds of elements. The overhead of checking missed clicks is miniscule compared to binding one function for each element.
• delegate is always faster than live. It can limit where in the page it will listen for events, and does not need to iterate over all the elements when binding.

If you’re after hard numbers, I read in an article about delegate that the tipping point is around 3-5 elements. Use click for less than that, and delegate for more. I can’t back that up with a link unfortunately, but that’s the general rule I’ve been following.