Using the .not() operator with jQuery it is possible to select only the first level of children of an element. This could come in handy on a menu for instance. Let’s see what the menu code looks like.

	
Item
             

	        
Sub
	        
Sub2
	        
Sub3
             

	
Item2
	
Item3

We are trying to get ul li, but not ul li ul li. jQuery has a brilliant method to select page elements like so:

$('ul li')

However this will get ALL of the li elements not matter the depth. We only want the first level of li. Luckily jQuery again has a method to accomplish this using .not()

$('ul li').not('ul li ul li')

Voila! We now have only the first level of li elements