Why is the fact that Microsoft decided to support jQuery such a big deal?

Question

Its the first time MS is shipping an open source component they didn't write with one of their products. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but its almost nuclear in its implications.

Think about it... They are saying "we support this." In an OSS product, MS has no control over the code. So, they are putting their livelihood (in some small way) into the hands of people who don't work for MS.

I think jQuery's popularity, the fact that it's not mission critical code, and that the codebase is so small all came together to make for favorable circumstances for MS to dip their toe in the water.

The significance of Microsoft shipping jQuery with ASP.Net, even though it's open source, has little or nothing to do with Microsoft supporting outside open source software and nearly everything to do with establishing a de-facto javascript framework standard.

Consider: there are currently at least 1/2 dozen javascript toolkits out there that are all very nice. These toolkits represent a huge improvement over traditional javascript development. They add power and help smooth over browser incompatibilities. Eventually you'll have a hard time finding a web project that doesn't use one. One day they might even be baked into your browser to save page load times. Every web developer owes it to themselves to learn one, and most understand this.

But which one? As I said, there are several out there that are an excellent technical choice. How do you choose? The problem is that you're not really qualified to judge on the technical merits unless you learn them all, and who has time for that?

In this case it's much easier and safer to just follow the crowd. Failing a clear technical superiority, most developers will want to pick the toolkit that gets the most adoption among other like-minded developers, for four reasons:

• It guarantees the skill will be useful later
• They'll be able to find help and support for it when they need it.
• They trust their peers to do a good job picking the framework that is technically superior, or at least technically competent.
• Because the different options are all mainly open source, the most popular should also over time become the best technical choice.

So what we have is a situation where everyone is waiting to see which framework everyone else picks. Frankly, the lack of a clear winner among the various toolkits has hurt adoption; I know it's prevented me personally from taking the plunge.

Until now. Now ASP.Net developers have a clear choice. If you use ASP.Net, you probably want to take the time to learn jQuery. Not Prototype. Not MooTools. Not something else. Your natural choice is jQuery.

Those other tools are nice as well, but for better or worse jQuery just got a huge leg up here, and this really is a popularity contest. jQuery's emerging popularity among other platforms as well means it's quickly becoming the de-facto javascript framework standard. Very soon you'll have a hard time calling yourself a web developer if you don't know jQuery, and a lot of people will look back and say that this was the tipping point.

So the real significance here has little to do with the whole "Microsoft using open source" thing. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter as much whether jQuery is open source, though it may help in the long run. What does matter is that this will cause a significant number of developers to start using it, possibly enough to create a hegemony. And that's what this space has really needed. We can finally start moving forward again in advancing client-side web development.

You have a 500 Pound Gorilla whose official company politics always stood against open source suddenly deciding to actively include and support an Open Source component for technical reasons. jQuery is not some legal requirement put on them by US or EU Anti-Trust lawsuits. It's not forced on Microsoft through some standard or some "must-support" component. They are more or less solely choosing it for technical reasons instead of doing their usual "We reinvent the wheel, make it not as good as the free solutions and also not make it open source".

It's like the pope advertising condoms, it's like the Washington Wizards winning the NBA Title, it's like republicans voting for a 700 billion $ program, it's like the OPEC supporting solar and wind energy... it's something that seemed unthinkable before, even keeping in mind that Microsoft has some of the best talent working for them. In fact, most of the people I look up to are working at Microsoft now.

I can only imagine how much discussion and persuation work was needed to make this happen, and I lift my hat for the people within Microsoft who have proven that reason can succeed sometimes.

It is a huge deal!

The fact that MS is leveraging a technology that it didn't develop is a big step.

Also, the fact they aren't buying it out or consuming it is a very big step as well.

Personally, I have found using jQuery to be a big help while I've been developing ASP.NET MVC. It has helped me to simplify my Views where if I didn't have jQuery my Views would have been too complicated.

I think this is a great stop in the right direction.

its mainly because JQuery is excellent. Now MS "supports" it, lots of people who never heard of it, were instructed not to use it because it was "open source", or were instructed not to use it because it was "not Microsoft" all can now start writing brilliant browser-based code.

That's all a good thing. Its a sorry state of affairs in the computer industry where lots of people cannot use a lot of software, but that's the way it is.

Like it or not, Microsoft is one of the biggest player in the software industry, so anything it does is a big deal. And in this case, it seems to be a good thing.

A big aspect of it is syntax. jQuery has a different meaning for $() than does prototype and ASP.NET AJAX. This is going to force javascript libraries to work out compatibility -- first by Microsoft, then by everyone else. This will be a definite plus for web designers cross-platform.

UPDATE: I just the announcement on John Resig's blog: As part of Microsoft's official release, it means the Microsoft is going to be DOCUMENTING jQuery! jQuery's docs right now are "OK for an OSS project" (i.e., they don't suck that badly), but with the MSDN team of tech writers on it, we should have something truly useful.

UPDATE2 (in response to the comments): That is nonsense, and shows an anti-MSFT bias more than anything else. Of parts of jQuery that are the best documented (the core functions), that documentation is roughly equal to the level given in the MSDN. So, how could one be "quite good" and the other "suck"? If the rest of the jQuery documentation (notably the plugins, and this includes the "official" plugins like "UI"), it's just dreadful. Take for example UI/Tabs, which shows a big block of HTML without explaining which parts are required and which are for just styling the demo. And doesn't mention (or in some releases even include) the more-or-less required CSS file. Or, how 'bout UI/Autocomplete which is in the latest relese, but completely missing from the UI docs (and differs in some subtle, but important ways from the stand-alone Autocomplete on which it was based).