jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
"You start with 10 lines of jQuery that would have been 20 lines of tedious DOM JavaScript. By the time you are done it's down to two or three lines and it couldn't get any shorter unless it read your mind." - Dave Methvin
--- 'nough said! I've been using it for the last month, and I can't write "normal" javascript anymore I recommend it:
as ever with a programming library/framework assuming of course that the benefits in live-code pageload reduction outweigh the gains cause by the use of a library
safari displays jquery effects very nicely - much better than ff but then that could be the tighter integration of safari into the display OS on a mac
firebug is still the best debug tool for js and jquery
a lot of jquery failures dont get picked up as errors in safari console they just dont work causing other parts fo a jquery script to just not work crashing silently