(One needs some form of browser normalization so that modern features works, no-one is doubting that).
Related: jQuery library critique
QSA works (shim=sizzle). Besides selectors are generally bad practice. Favour node traversal, gEBI, gEBTN and gEBCN. (shim=domShim)
The DOM attribute API works. Besides one rarely touches attributes and one rarely touches innerHTML. Generally one manipulates properties
properties work, weakmaps work (shim=weakmap-shim)
Promises, deferreds, futures, etc aren't that useful. Favour managing callbacks and using flow control techniques.
DOM2 events work (shim=domshim). You don't need anything else.
The HTML form element is more useful. Doesn't give any useful abstraction
The DOM works (shim=domShim). If you want set like behaviour you can use NodeComposite
ES5 works (shim=ES5shim)
For simple use cases the XHR API is trivial to use. For more complex use cases you can use a library like xhr
It should be noted that there is no solid shim for XHR2 yet, including file uploads & CORS.
Todo: Write an XHR2 shim
I havn't seen any good CSS normalization shims. One propably needs some form of abstraction to handle CSS nicely.
Todo: Write an CSSOMView shim and a CSSOM shim.
Animations, Don't know of a good CSS3 shim, so we still need a browser abstraction.
Todo: Find an elegant standards compliant polyfill / shim solution to programmatic animations.
Agreed, something like 62K!!
jQ.Mobi is not jquery mobile, quite the opposite of tastes, jQ.Mobi is a 'html5 mobile' re-write of jQuery that supports plugins, has a super lightweight selector support (which, for novice dev's isn't bad since they probably already understand css)
Basically it supports jQuery plugins, cuts out all the crap that causes memory leaks on mobile.
Oh, biggest point is that it's 5k, and twice as fast as jquery