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Comment by jordanlev | Hacker News Reader

I would actually not consider jQuery to be innovative as much as it was a refinement/improvement of existing libraries such as Prototype and Dojo. I think jQuery is great so this isn't a knock against it, but rather just saying that sometimes one thing comes out that is revolutionary but then something else that is an improvement/iteration on that smooths out the rough edges and becomes "the one framework to rule them all" (for a few years, at least).

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jQuery's api seemed innovative and quite different than the other libraries I used at the time.

- css selectors to get at nodes. Very dom-focused, but without messing w/ prototypes like _Prototype_ did

- almost every function in the api acted on both single nodes and collection of nodes. It seems like it started the 'chaining' trend.

- no complicated class/namespace hierarchy to learn. Every function was on $ or $.fn. `$('.foo').hide('slow')` vs the equivalent in Prototype involved instantiating an Animation object and passing in the dom node, as I recall.

- cared about file size and not clobbering other globals.

Improvement on an existing design is still innovation.

The invention of rubber tires WAS innovative, even if we had stone/wooden wheels for milennia.

And the iPod was innovative, even if we had heavy, crappy UI, plasticky third party mp3 players before that.

Making something better by making it more lean, more stable, or more understandable is still innovating. Originality isn't the only factor.

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