I didn't cover that because I think the criteria changes depending on your role and the type of company you work for. For instance, when I was at a large financial company, it needed to be something that was well established, with solid documentation and with professional support options (so, often this was something along the lines of professional open source). When I was with a consulting company, I was much more open to new frameworks as I might encounter clients using them or they might be suitable for some project.
When I am compiling my weekly update, it ends up being something that appears to have at least some decent documentation and the description sounds both useful and makes sense (you won't believe how many libraries/frameworks I come across that I simply have no idea what they actually do or how they are different).
Anyway, all that is to say, I don't know that there is one set of criteria that works for everyone and it is subjective anyway. Sorry if that sounds like a cop out.
I don't think I am saying this is a bad thing either. However many people find it overwhelming causing them to react negatively. My goal was, in fact, to turn it into a good thing by helping with strategies to cope.
I've looked into what it would take just to dump jQuery for DOM traversal and manipulation. It can be done in plain JS, but you end up rewriting a lot of methods to fill in the gaps already filled by jQuery. My conclusion was, it's still easier and more productive to use jQuery.
> It can be done in plain JS, but you end up rewriting a lot of methods to fill in the gaps already filled by jQuery. My conclusion was, it's still easier and more productive to use jQuery.
Of course. That's the entire point of jQuery :/
If your goal is to put up an application - jQuery is basically industry standard. If your goal is to develop a better intuition about how the DOM works - then stick to JavaScript.
When I am compiling my weekly update, it ends up being something that appears to have at least some decent documentation and the description sounds both useful and makes sense (you won't believe how many libraries/frameworks I come across that I simply have no idea what they actually do or how they are different).
Anyway, all that is to say, I don't know that there is one set of criteria that works for everyone and it is subjective anyway. Sorry if that sounds like a cop out.