I’m writting a couple articles for DotNetSlackers on jQuery. Part 1 of 2 is now available. A former colleague turned me onto jQuery a while ago, and I’ve been a fan ever since. It makes programming JavaScript and writting HTML fun. Aside from its slick API I think there are a couple good lessons to learn from jQuery. First, compared to other JavaScript frameworks, jQuery is extremely focused. It only does a few things but does them far better than anyone else. This makes it lightweight and a breeze to learn (seriously takes about 20 minutes) yet extremely powerful. Secondly, it solves a real problem. Everyone knows that cross-browser DOM traversal and manipulation is a serious problem. jQuery provides you a toolbox that works, rather than some pre-built furniture that simply decorates.
There’s also a good ALT.NET and Microsoft angle to jQuery. First, if you sandboxed yourself to the msdn way you wouldn’t know about jQuery until a few weeks ago. You simply would have missed out on this wonderful tool. On the flip side, that Microsoft has embraced jQuery is just one of many recent moves from Microsoft which shows a concrete and sincere shift in its philosophies. Hooorraa
This move will get a very good support if they really work hard to integrate jQuery and its intellisense in the VS 2005 and Vs 2008.
They can publish small patches for both of them. Its really true that you can learn jQuery very fast, but you need to put that to work also very fast. And being a VS user, I am always very much looking for intellisense. There are some hacks published by VS team, but I think new developers have to struggle with them.
jQuery is actually one of those fun tools to learn. It’s amazing how quickly the basics can be learned and put to good use making more interactive sites with jQuery. Not to mention all numerous plugins available. It’s good to see MS is going to start shipping jQuery with VS