According to W3Tech, this link, this link, this link, and many other sources, jQuery is really becoming what IE experienced in the world of web browsers (gaining more than 80% of the market for a period).
I don't have the knowledge of any other JavaScript library like MooTools, YUI, etc. because when I started web development, jQuery was already ahead and I chose it.
Are other libraries really that awful, or do they lack something jQuery exclusively has? What is the reason(s) behind this huge market share?
Best Answer
Mission and philosophy: jQuery set out to make DOM manipulation easier to use, and had a single minded focus on achieving that goal. Other frameworks like Mootools and Dojo focused on making it easier to create complex applications, an idea that was ahead of its time (in 2007), and split the attention of the community and created unnecessary complexity for 99% of developers who are not interested in complex applications or advance javascript.
Chaining. jQuery chains, other frameworks didn't. This resulted in a great readability and ease of use revolution as far as javascript is concerned.