[emehrkay]

If backbone didn't use a normalization library like jQuery, they'd have to write their own and I don't think that is the aim of the project.

[lucaspiller]

The normalisation is purely to support older browsers though. Backbone doesn't really use that much of jQuery, have a search for 'Backbone.$' through the annotated source [1]. There are only 10 uses of it in the whole file, and not for anything too crazy. In modern browsers you could probably do away with jQuery and still avoid "if safari then...".

[1] http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html

[masklinn]

Note that backbone is also compatible zith Zepto though.

[emehrkay]

According to Backbone, Zepto is jQuery as it has the same interface.