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This is called "argumentum ad populum" (appeal to popularity). The advent of jQuery caused clueless "developers" (along with library authors) to beg for "native" selectors. QS(A) is the result. They were never needed in the first place.

> Why? ie5.5 is 12 years old.

Internet Explorer's Quirks Mode (which still exists in IE 9) is a simulation of IE 5. It's useful for testing against IE's old box model.

caused clueless "developers" (along with library authors) to beg for "native" selectors.

ahh now I get it. you're one of those guys. you're just smarter than everyone else right? good luck with that.

would you please edit/update your non-response to be less useless.

Nooo... you don't.

You are one of those guys that figures anything popular must be smart. Good luck with that. :)

Right and you have to test at least one browser that ranks below your expectations, else you wouldn't know if your feature detection/testing was working.

Granted, the typical Web developer will simply announce they don't care about any browsers deemed inferior (or unknown to them) at the time. History has shown that such carelessness leads to sites that are more likely to break in future (unknown to them at the time of development) browsers.

Often the expected outcome for IE 5 is a static page.

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