You say "next couple of years". IE6 was released in 2001 and while it's finally on it's way out, you will run into people who want it supported. So by next co

You say "next couple of years". IE6 was released in 2001 and while it's finally on it's way out, you will run into people who want it supported. So by next couple of years, do you mean 10 years after IE8 was released which would be 2018 we'll begin to see support for it dropping? jQuery serves the exact purpose of allowing you to push your design forward without burning as much time supporting inconsistency. I believe jQuery defers to built in browser implementations when they are better or compatible so you still don't loose anything by using jQuery