Scott Guthrie has just announced that Microsoft is going to include the JQuery JavaScript library as part of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1. JQuery is has quickly become the most popular JavaScript library out there, despite the competition and weighs in at only 15KB.

On the face of it, this is an unprecedented move by Microsoft. Nobody would have even dreamed of seeing an open source project being adopted by the Big M... exciting times! They are going to make it an integral part of their own framework and build upon it in the shape of controls for the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and new Ajax server-side helper methods for ASP.NET MVC.

My achilles heel as a developer has always been my limited knowledge of JavaScript but I recently took steps to immerse myself in it. Having JQuery to build upon is like getting Christmas early and should provide some great fun and excitement over the coming few years as we start to construct richer and more creative Web experiences.

Some JQuery Resources:

    * 10 Smart JavaScript Techniques
    * 10 Useful JQuery Plugins
    * Comparing Popular JavaScript/AJAX Frameworks
    * JQuery Documentation
    * JQuery Selectors Reference Card (PDF)