The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today.

Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward. By default, when you create new ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects with VS 2010, the core jQuery library is now automatically added to your project.

Earlier this year at the MIX 2010 conference I announced that Microsoft would also begin contributing code to the jQuery project. During one of my keynotes, John Resig -- the creator of the jQuery library – joined me on stage and talked a little about our participation and discussed an early prototype of a new client templating API for jQuery.

I later blogged more details about the jQuery Templates plugin, jQuery Data Link plugin, and jQuery Globalization plugin that the ASP.NET team has been working on in conjunction with the jQuery team and jQuery community. We’ve had a lot of requests from ASP.NET customers looking to enable this type of functionality. We followed the standard jQuery open source model and posted prototypes of the plugins to Github.com, participated in the jQuery forums, and incorporated design feedback from the community.

Official jQuery Plugins

Today, I am happy to make a joint announcement with the jQuery team that the jQuery project has accepted these three plugins (jQuery Templates, jQuery Data Link, and jQuery Globalization) as official jQuery plugins.

As official jQuery plugins, the plugins will be maintained as part of the jQuery project. Starting today, you can download these plugins by visiting the jQuery website. The documentation for these plugins is also now integrated within the official jQuery documentation site.

Furthermore, in the next major release of jQuery (jQuery 1.5), the jQuery Templates plugin will be included as a standard part of the core jQuery library. This means that the “jQuery Templates” functionality will be included in the jQuery.js file. And it means that developers will be able to take advantage of a standard templating library and syntax when working with jQuery.

Learning More

You can learn more about the plugins by watching the following Web Camps TV episode hosted by James Senior with Stephen Walther:

Below is additional information (and links to the official documentation on jQuery.com) for the three plugins:

jQuery Templates

The jQuery Templates plugin enables you to create client templates. For example, you can use the jQuery Templates plugin to format a set of database records that you have retrieved from the server through an Ajax request.

You can learn more about jQuery templates by reading my earlier blog entry on jQuery Templates and Data-Linking or by reading the documentation about it on the official jQuery website. In addition, Rey Bango, Boris Moore and James Senior have written some good blog posts on the jQuery Templates plugin:

When the next major version of jQuery is released -- jQuery 1.5 -- jQuery Templates will be included as a standard part of the jQuery library.

jQuery Data Link

The jQuery Data Link plugin enables you to easily keep your user interface and data synchronized. For example, you can use the Data Link plugin to automatically synchronize the input fields of an HTML product form with the properties of a JavaScript product object.

You can learn more about the Data Link plugin by reading my previous blog entry on jQuery Templates and Data-Linking. The documentation for the Data Link plugin is also now live at the official jQuery website.

jQuery Globalization

The jQuery Globalization plugin enables you to use different cultural conventions when formatting or parsing numbers, dates and times, calendars, and currencies. The Globalization plugin has information on over 350 cultures. You can use this plugin with the core jQuery library or plugins built on top of the jQuery library.

You can learn more about the jQuery Globalization plugin by reading my previous blog entry on the jQuery Globalization plugin.

Summary

My team is excited to participate and contribute to the jQuery project. We hope these three plugins make it easier for all web developers to build great sites and applications. We’ve made good progress the last few months, and are looking forward to making new announcements concerning jQuery in the future.

You can learn even more about today’s announcement from the jQuery team’s blog post about it.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu