Conditionally switch jquery version In order to get a necessary jQuery plugin to work I had to upgrade my jQuery version to 1.4.

To do this I installed jquery_update and manually put 1.4 in the module directory.

That's working just fine for the public facing side of my site, but now various AHAH elements (like Views UI or FileField uploads) no longer work on the admin side.

I'd like to use Drupal's jQuery for admin/edit pages, and jquery_update's jQuery for everything else.  What's the least hacky way of doing this?  Or is there a totally different solution for this?
I had to do this recently also. Revert your jquery_update to 1.3.2 (or whatever it provides by default) and follow the instructions at http://drupal.org/node/1058168.

They key is to notice that you load the newer version of jQuery before the &lt;?php print $scripts; ?&gt; in your page.tpl.php.

The final thing you need to do, which is not mentioned there, is to load your jquery plugin in between the new jQuery and the jQuery.noConflict(). This will make it so you don't have to modify the plugin (That pages tells you how to modify the plugin if you can't do this final step).