jQuery events .load(), .ready(), .unload()

NOTE: .load() & .unload() have been deprecated

$(window).load();

Will execute after the page along with all its contents are done loading. This means that all images, CSS (and content defined by CSS like custom fonts and images), scripts, etc. are all loaded. This happens event fires when your browser's "Stop" -icon becomes gray, so to speak. This is very useful to detect when the document along with all its contents are loaded.

$(document).ready();

This on the other hand will fire as soon as the web browser is capable of running your JavaScript, which happens after the parser is done with the DOM. This is useful if you want to execute JavaScript as soon as possible.

$(window).unload();

This event will be fired when you are navigating off the page. That could be Refresh/F5, pressing the previous page button, navigating to another website or closing the entire tab/window.

To sum up, ready() will be fired before load(), and unload() will be the last to be fired.

window load will wait for all resources to be loaded.

document ready waits for the document to be initialized.

unload well, waits till the document is being unloaded.

the order is: document ready, window load, ... ... ... ... window unload.

always use document ready unless you need to wait for your images to load.

shorthand for document ready:

$(function(){
    // yay!
});

If both "document.ready" variants are used they will both fire, in the order of appearance

$(function(){
    alert('shorthand document.ready');
});

//try changing places
$(document).ready(function(){
    alert('document.ready');
});