:firstS2C Home « Selectors « :first

First element match selector.

Shorthand version $(':first')

Description

The :first selector, selects the first matched element.

  • Unlike the :first-child element this selector will only ever return one element.

  • Like all the positional selectors :eq() uses a zero-based index to select from previously filtered elements.
  • Being a jQuery extension the :eq() pseudo selector is not part of any current CSS specification. Therefore :first cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM querySelectorAll() method.
  • The same results can be achieved with better performance using the :first method with a valid CSS selector, for example $("cssSelector"):first.

This method was deprecated in jQuery 3.4.

Syntax

Signature Description
jQuery(':first')First element match

Parameters

None.

Return

N/A.

:first ExampleTop

Selects first matched element.

In the example below we apply an orange background to first 'td' element of the tables marked with a class of 'javatable'. So the table below will not be selected but the Syntax table above will be.

First Element Selector Has No Effect on this table
Table Row 1, Table Data 1 Table Row 1, Table Data 2
Table Row 2, Table Data 1 Table Row 2, Table Data 2
Table Row 3, Table Data 1 Table Row 3, Table Data 2
Table Row 4, Table Data 1 Table Row 4, Table Data 2


$(function(){

  $('#btn1').on('click', function() {
    $(".javatable td:first").css('backgroundColor', 'orange');
  });

});
  

Press the button below to action the above code:


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