Extending jQuery selectors and facing conflicts with querySelectorAll

You know that is possible to extend the jQuery selector capabilities?
Just type...

$.expr[':'].foo = function(element) {
    ...
};

... and this function will be called when :foo selector is used.
Nothing new on this side.

Recently I started working on a new jQuery plugin and to make things simpler I needed to find a way to override an existing jQuery selector. Again: nothing new; some years ago I found that the method described in the article above can be also use for override, and not only for extend.
To make things more testable I decided to move this behavior into another (separated) jQuery plugin, which is the argument of this post.

When I used this method again nowadays I found unexpected results.
I was looking a way to change the way :checked and :checkbox selectors work, so I defined...

$.expr[':'].checkbox = function(element) {
    ...
};

...and...

$.expr[':'].checked = function(element) {
    ...
}; 

This is what I found:

• :checkbox was working as expected
• :checked was not working as expected

In facts, the :checked selector was only working when using it inside a .filter() call.
I'm not a jQuery core expert, I never looked at it's code very much, but this time I needed to investigate my problem. Also: I need to make this work on jQuery 1.7 and more modern 1.10 version, and codes are quite different.

Here what I found: both jQuery versions contains a method for capturing the :checked selector, but it's only called when you call filter() (so here my override attempt works as expected). For normal selectors jQuery now heavily relies on native querySelectorAll API for every browser that is supporting it.

This is the core of the problem: the :checkbox selector is a non-standard ones (not defined by any CSS specifications) while :checked is a know CSS selector. So browsers that support the :checked selector for querySelectorAll are calling this native API.

This is someway hilarious! While querySelectorAll are making our browser (and jQuery usage) faster, it's lowering jQuery extensions capabilities.

I found no smart way to change how querySelectorAll works (and probably there's no way at all, I think we are at C compiled code level here).
The trick I used is to disable the native querySelectorAll when the selector contains :checked, and in that case call my jQuery version instead.
How?

    var pattern = /\:checked/;
    if (document.querySelectorAll !== 'undefined') {
        // need to partially disable querySelectorAll for :checked
        document.nativeQuerySelectorAll = document.querySelectorAll;
        document.querySelectorAll = function(selector) {
            if (pattern.test(selector)) {
                throw('Native ":checked" selector disabled')
            }
            return this.nativeQuerySelectorAll(selector);
        }
    }

The first step is to disable (keeping a "backup") querySelectorAll, changing it with a custom function. Then all I need to do is check if the :checked selector is used somewhere in the query. If not: just call the backed up querySelectorAll, but if it's called somewhere I simply need to raise an exception.

This is the interesting part I found looking at the jQuery source: jQuery core try to use querySelectorAll every time is possible, switching to internal JavaScript code only when it's not supported. In this way I'm simulating the fact that my modern browser is not supporting :checked selector for querySelectorAll.

Problems

I found this experiment interesting, but there's some things I don't like:

• I'm disabling the native querySelectorAll usage also when it's basic features are enough (i.e: if I really need to load only checked checkboxes and not other fancy stuff)
• I'm wrapping every querySelectorAll calls inside the selector check, making all calls to querySelectorAll slower
• I want only to extend jQuery here, but I'm also disabling all native querySelectorAll calls if the query containes ":checked"
• I'm changing how JavaScript works. This is calling me back to times when I used prototype.js (that I never liked)

Any suggestion for a better code way are welcome!
This is the result of the experiment: jQuery WAI ARIA Compatible Checkbox Plugin.

Off-topic

Apart the problem described in this article, I let's spend some words on the "new" jQuery Plugin Site. Last time I published a jQuery plugin (lot of time ago) this site was a total mess: you need to authenticate, upload source tarball, write documentation on a wiki-like page, ...

I really liked how it works now: if you want to publish a plugin, just put it on GitHub and configure a commit hook! Simple and amazing!