Well done jQuery
As everyone already knows, Microsoft has announced that jQuery will ship in the future with Visual Studio. I think this really is a step forward and will definitely complement all the exciting new developments going on with ASP.NET including the enhancements with ASP.NET Ajax and ASP.NET 3.5 + SP1.
But...
Heres what I would like to know: Why did Microsoft choose jQuery? The only explanation I can come up with is: Well..why not?
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I have ported JavaScript from jQuery to PrototypeJS and visa-versa, even emulated functionality Ive seen in one with the other. Aftera while, I ended up settling into PrototypeJS, why? Well, honestly its probably not because of PrototypeJS itself, but because of script.aculo.us. Going back 12 months or so, the animations and effects in script.aculo.us to me appeared a little smoother and seemed to have more browser compatibility then the jQuery of the time.
I have recently been writing a client-side control extender using the ASP.NET Ajax libraries then using PrototypeJS+script.aculo.us to basically fill the gaps. And thus far these libraries are an exceptionally powerful and productive combination.
Battle tested
Lets also not forget that PrototypeJS + script.aculo.us are included as part of Ruby-on-rails, which basically means you can be assured that these JavaScript libraries have been deployed in a huge variety of websites in the Ruby community.
Taking a look at the warm-fuzzy real world client list on Prototypes site and jQuerys site, its obvious that both libraries are popular, there are a lot of big companies in each list, some are even listed in both. Funnily enough though Microsoft itself is listed only on the Prototype site.. :)
Conclusion?
Not really knowing where to get answers or reasons, I took a long shot and fired a tweet at Scott Hanselmanno pulse, but I didnt expect anything. Im just wanting to know what makes jQuery so special? It definitely has a better website then PrototypeJS. Ive read forum comments that in some casesjQuery is only being used for its plugins, which are conveniently accessible from a link on the homepage. How many people even know that Scripteka has a collection of downloadable plug-ins for prototype!? I agree that the guys over at Prototype should look at a website refresh and start pulling the community together a bit.
The future
In any respect I feel this is a step forward for Microsoft actually accepting and using Open Source products for .net instead of replicating them. And you never know, shipping NHibernate with Sql Server would be to me, a whole new level of respekt.
