jQuery & jQuery UI Documentation

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:first Selector

Categories: Selectors > Basic Filter | Selectors > jQuery Extensions

first selector

version added: 1.0jQuery(':first')

Description: Selects the first matched element.

The :first pseudo-class is equivalent to :eq(0). It could also be written as :lt(1). While this matches only a single element, :first-child can match more than one: One for each parent.

Additional Notes:

  • Because :first is a jQuery extension and not part of the CSS specification, queries using :first cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM querySelectorAll() method. To achieve the best performance when using :first to select elements, first select the elements using a pure CSS selector, then use .filter(":first").

Example:

Finds the first table row.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <style>

  td { color:blue; font-weight:bold; }
  </style>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <table>
    <tr><td>Row 1</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Row 2</td></tr>

    <tr><td>Row 3</td></tr>
  </table>
<script>$("tr:first").css("font-style", "italic");</script>

</body>
</html>
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