Strange jQuery misbehavior in a quite crowded environment

Strange jQuery misbehavior in a quite crowded environment


Hello.
I'm working on a relatively small customization to a large site. Today
I found a quite strange misbehavior in jQuery. I think it's because of
script environment which looks quite like a soup.
jQuery version I'm using is 1.2.6. I know it's old, but it's not my
choice, actually it is integrated as a part of a larger client-server
framework. I talked to other guys but they are thinking yet to move to
a newer version. So I'm stuck with 1.2.6 and that's what I have to
work with.
Now environment. Just to name a few, there are: lightbox, prototype
and scriptaculous, ruzeeborders and cssQuery. There are also many
more, but those scripts are either custom or just of particular
purpose for this page. I think one of the brand libraries is to blame
(most possibly prototype, which is also way too old - v1.4). Of
course, jQuery.noConflict() is used.
And finally the misbehaviour itself. When I do something like jQuery
('div') - any selection which grabs more than one element - the
resulting object is generally a jQuery selection, BUT all elements are
additionally packed into array and put into [0]. So when I log jQuery
('div')[0], I see an array of all divs, not just the first one. There
are usually no other indexes inside the resulting object - just [0],
which holds a plain array of found elements.
Because of that no event binding and no other nifty things work. Only
if I select something singular, e.g. using id, the jQuery works as
usual.
So what am I to do? Will the newer jQ1.3.2 help me?