- The
ready
event occurs after the HTML document has been loaded, while theonload
event occurs later, when all content (e.g. images) also has been loaded. - The
onload
event is a standard event in the DOM, while theready
event is specific to jQuery. The purpose of theready
event is that it should occur as early as possible after the document has loaded, so that code that adds functionality to the elements in the page doesn’t have to wait for all content to load.