Question

Take for example I have a form as below:

<form id="form1" name="form1">
    <input id="firstName" name="firstName" type="text"/>
</form> 

Which one of the following ways is better and faster?

var firstName = $('#firstName').val()

Or

var form1 = document.forms.form1;
var firstName = form1.firstName.value

In case of both multiple fields and single field.

Answer 1

Using jQuery will always give slower results than pure JavaScript solution, so the second way is faster by all means. However, the fastest way is to target form element by ID with:

var firstName = document.getElementById("firstName").value;

JSPerf: http://jsperf.com/access-form-element