Dan Herbert's

Microsoft recently announced that the javascript library jQuery is going to be included in future Visual Studio 2008 releases as well as a patch/hotfix coming soon. In addition to this, Microsoft plans to offer full support of the API, including intellisense, and inclusing into its “shared source” AJAX Control Toolkit libraries.

For those who have never heard of jQuery, it is a Javascript library/API that has become very popular since it first came out. It focuses on the “less is more” principal, meaning that the API is very minimal, but it also allows developers to do more with less lines of code.

jQuery is run by John Resig, a man who really knows his stuff when it comes to Javascript. He’s responsible for the FUEL API in Firefox 3 and he’s very outspoken about the power of Javascript. Because of the knowledge of John, as well as the other developers writing the library, the API can do things other Javascript API’s can’t do, or don’t do as easily (in my opinion)

• Work totally fine side-by-side with other Javascript libraries, including different versions of jQuery, on the same page
• Allow for powerful plugins to be written to expand the functionality of the API
• Lightning fast performance
• Extremely effective DOM traversal
• Offer an simple, consistent, understandable core API
• Work consistently across every browser.