[benaiah]

You make great points, and I think you're right. While I think the OP's advice is appropriate for most situations, particularly in general JavaScript code you have to share with other developers, jQuery's use of it is probably entirely appropriate. I skimmed the article, and by the end, I was already starting to grok how they were using the ternary at first glance - and, as others have pointed out, they may have more important considerations, such as execution speed, driving this usage.

Tangentially, I think his point about the descriptive variable names is far more important than avoiding if...else aliases (though it's not an original point, and the examples he shows are appropriate uses of short variable names).

I didn't think you were particularly patronizing. If you were, then I didn't mind.