Javascript / jQuery

My first real use of Javascript to augment the user experiece was in 2006.

After being introduced to jQuery during 2009 by a Front End developer who joined the team I was managing I was totally sold on it's benefits (i.e. a short-hand cross browser javascript solution).

My only critisism was the inclusion of yet another file (latency & bandwidth) where for most simple applications (E.g. this website) the js could be directly coded.  This is over come by including the jQuery library from a CDN host - I've done that here using the Google APIs url.  Using a CDN (a) delivers the file quicker and (b) is more likely to have been cached in the browser already.  Thus there really is no negative overhead.  (I'm aware that this does not apply for secure web applications)

jQuery plugins that I've used:

• jqPlot to render graphs that contain realively few data points client side
• jCarousel (extensively)