document.getElementById vs jQuery $()

No.

Calling document.getElementById('id') will return a raw DOM object.

Calling $('#id') will return a jQuery object that wraps the DOM object and provides jQuery methods.

Thus, you can only call jQuery methods like css() or animate() on the $() call.

You can also write $(document.getElementById('id')), which will return a jQuery object and is equivalent to $('#id').

You can get the underlying DOM object from a jQuery object by writing $('#id')[0].

Not exactly!!

document.getElementById('contents'); //returns a HTML DOM Object

var contents = $('#contents');  //returns a jQuery Object

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In jQuery, to get the same result as document.getElementById, you can access the jQuery Object and get the first element in the object (Remember JavaScript objects act similar to associative arrays).

var contents = $('#contents')[0]; //returns a HTML DOM Object