I'm a jquery programmer, jquery has some disadvantage than javascript, For example, if you use $('#blah').html('a') a few more times, it will leak all your user's memory. However if you use document.getElementById('blah').innerHTML = 'a'; , your memory usage is constant at that level. It's because jquery convert the 'a' into DOM object, but the pure javascript just append it directly. Otherwise, it's good because I have to write lesser with jquery