jQuery('.contributors').thanks();

I stumbled upon jQuery when it was still in its early stages when all it did was offer powerful CSS and regexp style selectors. It immediately made DOM manipulation from within JavaScript easy, simple and reliable.

Within a few months of my discovery, jQuery had fixed cross-browser issues, and actually made it the choice for ensuring cross-browser support.

Here are some of the things that led me to consistently choose jQuery over Prototype, even if it meant eschewing the Rails/Prototype coupling and doing things the hard way.

• CSS-style and RegExp selectors.
• Light-weight - smaller file size, faster download, quicker load.
• Plays nice with others - jQuery.noConflict();
• Many powerful mechanisms for traversing and manipulating the DOM.
• Queue up onload logic from multiple places with jQuery(document).ready()
• Convenient call chaining  - jQuery(‘#thing’).doThis().that().more();
• Extensibility and lots of plugins.
• Excellent, fine-grained AJAX support.

With such features, it is no surprise that the jQuery has evolved into a thriving, distributed ecosystem providing innumerable plugins and UI and effects frameworks on top such as jqueryUI.

Thanks to all the contributors who make it happen.

jQuery("#resig,plugin.writers,.contributors").thanks();