> jQuery is kind of a big download for mobile, so I often skip it for small tasks.
That's what Zepto[0] is for: jQuery's API, 20% of the size (although it drops some features, e.g. $(selector) is pretty directly proxied to document.querySelectorAll, so $('> .foo') works in jQuery but blows up in Zepto)
Ah, last I looked at Zepto, it's support for non-webkit browsers was pretty lacking. It's good to see they're making strides on the cross-platform comparability front. The supported browsers list looks pretty good now.