I’m all for people using libraries, if they truly understand how they, and JavaScript itself, work. However, as long as libraries are out there, the people most prone to using them (of the people I’ve seen; I might be wrong here and it is not meant to offend anyone), all the time, are the ones most stressed and/or least skilled when it comes to JavaScript development.

Regarding Stuart’s idea about having some kind of unobtrusive/accessible code-check, it’s interesting, but not the only solution to it all. In the end, I think it’s the web developer’s responsibility to know what they’re doing, but nevertheless, maybe we can take some baby steps in that direction. What I did when I developed ASK ( http://www.robertnyman.com/2006/02/08/ask-ajax-source-kit) was to make sure that links dynamically getting content through AJAX could only be applied to links in the page.

In the end, I think it’s fair to ask of someone using a tool to know at least the very basics of how it works. To me, that’s not elitist but rather something that they themselves will benefit from in the long run. It’s for their own good, not for the sake of excluding them.

I don’t want big classes for handling events - I just need my addEvent() function. I have a collection of such very useful functions in my common file - it can be called a library.

If anyone wishes you want to create a ‘personal library’, Dustin Diaz, top 10 functions would be a good starting point. http://www.dustindiaz.com/top-ten-javascript/

But I have to imagine anyone who writes a library wants people (a lot of people) to use it. Not only that, but authors would probably like to see their libraries adopted as quickly as possible. On the off-chance that someone writing a library has actually considered your idea Stuart, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was decided against simply for fear that it would hinder the rate of adoption.

I’m not necessarily saying that’s a reason not to do what you suggest; I’m just saying perhaps it’s one of the reasons we haven’t seen it done yet?

Making the ‘best practice’ ways to do things easy in the case of a JS library would be things like making DOM navigation easier, providing a DOMContentReady event cross browser and easy and performant ways of selecting elements via CSS selectors or class names. jQuery does quite well at this and for that reason we see alot more unobtrusive code coming out of the jQuery camp than say the Dojo or Prototype camps. Prototype is actually missing alot of functionality in these important areas at the moment which is why I put together Low Pro. It contains all the bits missing from Prototye than I needed to code unobtrusively.

The difference is that making music doesn’t come with accessibility problems built in - nobody relies on techno to pay their bills; you don’t need drum ‘n’ bass to read the news and keep in touch with the world, and if house music makes no sense to you then you haven’t actually lost anything in practical terms.

But with web development it’s different - it matters that what we produce is right under the hood, because what you don’t see does matter! And that’s why I side with the "elitist" view in this case - frameworks and APIs are useful for fast prototyping, they have a role to play in allowing for more agile development cycles, but the vast majority of them pay no regard to accessibilty, and those that do still need to be handled with care and skill.

Therefore I would hesitate to use any framework without knowing exactly how it works, and testing it myself in every target environment. It’s not that I don’t trust Mr Resig, it’s just that every situation is unique and it’s impossible to predict every contingency - it’s not until you have your code running in it’s final situation that you can test whether it really works.

One caveat that is inherent to the web is that is very easy to copy and paste some code and actually have something very quickly.

If you are the kind of guy that hdan’t a particular idea in mind when started (like a real designer would), you may be pleased with just about anything under the sun. If someone else enjoy your work, you are halfway to be a self-proclaimed web-developer or web-designer.

I think libraries are just a facet of this wider problem.

Of course if you write your on library is because you are good enough to be using it, and that gives a sure shot about quality. But if the web is to be even more resourceful and start to show features that today are only available to standalone applications, then, 3rd party libraries will be necessary, just as they are today in traditional SW develpment.

Even further, if Ajax is to succed, it will probably be managed through some standard libraries, instead of handcrafted code, which will be a nice thing for serious developers, as well as the bad ones.

Oops, I think I should have written a shorter comment, sorry for that.