jQuery&#x27;s api seemed innovative and quite different than the other libraries I used at the time.<p>- css selectors to get at nodes.  Very dom-focused, but without messing w&#x2F; prototypes like _Prototype_ did<p>- almost every function in the api acted on both single nodes and collection of nodes.  It seems like it started the &#x27;chaining&#x27; trend.<p>- no complicated class&#x2F;namespace hierarchy to learn.  Every function was on $ or $.fn.  `$(&#x27;.foo&#x27;).hide(&#x27;slow&#x27;)` vs the equivalent in Prototype involved instantiating an Animation object and passing in the dom node, as I recall.<p>- cared about file size and not clobbering other globals.