Microsoft taps JQuery JavaScript library with its Visual Studio developer

Microsoft said Sunday that it plans to ship the JQuery JavaScript library with its Visual Studio developer tool suite. The software powerhouse said that jQuery would be one of the libraries used to implement higher-level controls in the ASP.net Ajax Control Toolkit, and would also have a role in new Ajax server-side helper methods. The 15KB JQuery JavaScript library will be distributed as is, with no forking, and files will continue to adhere to the JQuery MIT license. In addition, Microsoft said that it would contribute tests, bug fixes, and patches to the JQuery open-source project and that later this year it would extend product support to JQuery. The announcement came in a blog post by Scott Guthrie, a vice president in Microsoft's developer division, who described the library's attraction: A big part of the appeal of jQuery is that it allows you to elegantly (and efficiently) find and manipulate HTML elements with minimum lines of code. jQuery supports this via a nice "selector" API that allows developers to query for HTML elements, and then apply "commands" to them. One of the characteristics of jQuery commands is that they can be "chained" together - so that the result of one command can feed into another. jQuery also includes a built-in set of animation APIs that can be used as commands. The combination allows you to do some really cool things with only a few keystrokes. Guthrie also pointed to a newly posted tutorial on Scott Hanselman's Computerzen blog about integrating JQuery with ASP.net Ajax.   Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10053154-75.html