Cross-browser Compatibility

Aside from being a joy to use, one of the biggest benefits of jQuery is that it handles a lot of infuriating cross-browser issues for you. Anyone who has written serious JavaScript in the past can attest that cross-browser inconsistencies will drive you mad. For example, a design that renders perfectly in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 just falls apart in Internet Explorer 7, or an interface component you’ve spent days handcrafting works beautifully in all major browsers except Opera on Linux. And the client just happens to use Opera on Linux. These types of issues are never easy to track down, and even harder to completely eradicate.
Even when cross-browser problems are relatively simple to handle, you always need to maintain a mental knowledge bank of them. When it’s 11:00 p.m. the night before a major project launch, you can only hope you recall why there’s a weird padding bug on a browser you forgot to test!
The jQuery team is keenly aware of cross-browser issues, and more importantly they understand why these issues occur. They have written this knowledge into the library—so jQuery works around the caveats for you. Most of the code you write will run exactly the same on all the major browsers, including everybody’s favorite little troublemaker: Internet Explorer 6.
This feature alone will save the average developer a lifetime of headaches. Of course, you should always aim to keep up to date with the latest developments and best practices in our industry—but leaving the task of hunting down obscure browser bugs to the jQuery Team (and they fix more and more with each new version) allows you more time to implement your ideas.

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