I'm not going to lose sleep over adding a JQuery dependency. The fact is it gets you code that targets 95% of browsers with no hacks. I don't want to code explicitly for IE6-8, and JQuery gets me a lot of functionality on those browsers for free. Sure, there may be other frameworks, and sure, JQuery has its faults, and sure, a framework seems like overkill. But I feel a lot more sure about the functionality of my code when I'm relying on a broadly tested cross-browser suite.
The source is available and the license allows for derivatives. Would you be interested in forking the code and putting together a plain-javascript version?
No, sorry, I'm not much of an Javascript programmer, neither am I that interested. I realize my post kind of looks like standard wankery-won't-work-himself; I was replying specifically to lukeschlather only regarding whether a jquery dependency is advisable.
