Now that the news has hit the blogosphere, I'm seeing lots of questions out there about the jQuery/MSFT announcement.
My team pulled together some great Q&A on Friday to discuss the announcement that jQuery is now supported by the Microsoft Developer Platform. Hopefully this helps to answer some of your questions, but feel free to ping me on twitter (laurencooney) or email (lcooney@microsoft.com) if you have any additional questions.
Also, check out the following blogs for more info:
John Resig: http://jquery.com/blog/2008/09/28/jquery-microsoft-nokia/
Scott Guthrie: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx
Scott Hanselman: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/jQuerytoshipwithASPNETMVCandVisualStudio.aspx
Question: What is the announcement around Microsoft’s collaboration with jQuery?
Answer: Microsoft is announcing that it will officially make jQuery a part of the .NET Development platform.
Question: What is jQuery? Where can I find more information on jQuery?
Answer: jQuery is a popular JavaScript library. You can find more information about jQuery on the jQuery website http://jquery.com
Question: Why is Microsoft collaborating with jQuery?
Answer: Microsoft believes in empowering users. We want to make it easier for users to access jQuery because the features offered by jQuery are an excellent complement to the existing rich ASP.NET AJAX Library. Combined they will provide users with a comprehensive and powerful feature set. jQuery is not a replacement for ASP.NET AJAX. We will continue to work actively on making additions and improvements to ASP.NET AJAX as before.
Question: What about other popular script libraries/frameworks are you going to collaborate with?
Answer: Microsoft continues to listen to its users and act based on their requests. If in the future our users tell us that they would like to see other frameworks incorporated as well we will definitely try our best to make that happen.
Question: How are users benefited from this collaboration? How do I take advantage of jQuery for my existing ASP.NET projects?
Answer: Users will be provided a version of jQuery that they can incorporate in their existing or new ASP.NET projects. Users will get the full power of jQuery, combined with rich IntelliSense when creating ASP.NET applications in VisualStudio as well as official Microsoft product support for jQuery when used from an ASP.NET application. jQuery support will also be included in the ASP.NET MVC Beta. Microsoft is currently working on shipping jQuery as a part of the Visual Studio product.
Question: What advantages does this offer for jQuery users that are not using the .NET platform?
Answer: All users will be able to leverage the rich IntelliSense capabilities of Visual Studio when working with jQuery. Microsoft is committed to jQuery and will even be contributing new features and bug fixes based on the needs of the community.
Question: You are including jQuery with the ASP.NET MVC project template, what about Web Forms users?
Answer: Microsoft is fully committed towards our Web Forms users. All our users, not just MVC, will be provided a version of jQuery that they can incorporate in their existing or new projects. When we ship Visual Studio, we will ship jQuery with it and all projects including Web Forms will have easy access to jQuery.
Question: What are the investments Microsoft is making in jQuery?
Answer: In the future Microsoft will provide additional ASP.NET controls, samples and code-snippets that leverage jQuery. Microsoft is committed to jQuery and will even be contributing new features and bug fixes based on the needs of the community.
Question: What happens if our ASP.NET applications take a dependency on jQuery and run into issues? How will Microsoft address bugs in jQuery? Who can I contact if I run into problems using jQuery with my ASP.NET app?
Answer: Microsoft is committed to stand behind all its users. If your ASP.NET application takes a dependency on jQuery, and you run in to issues with jQuery, you can take advantage of Microsoft support just as you would with any Microsoft product.
Question: Is there a guarantee that Microsoft will be able to address all bugs/issues with jQuery?
Answer: Microsoft will try it’s best to address all issues faced by our customers but please be advised that Microsoft has to submit these changes to the jQuery development team for approval like all other contributors to jQuery. Although we expect that most of the changes we make will be approved by the jQuery development team there is no guarantee. The jQuery development team has the final authority on what does/does not go in jQuery.
Question: What happens when an updated version of jQuery is released?
Answer: The location of jQuery in the installation folders will be made well known. All users will need to do is to replace the old version with the new one.
Question: What license is Microsoft offering for jQuery? Are the terms/conditions to use jQuery different when I use the version from Microsoft?
Answer: Microsoft is providing jQuery as-is. The licensing jQuery users are used to will remain, and we'll continue to provide jQuery under the existing MIT License.