jQuery: the new defacto Javascript web framework

News from a couple days ago: both Microsoft and Nokia are now including the jQuery Javascript framework as part of their development kits. That is: jQuery will be part of Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX framework and be available for use in applications written for ASP.NET; and jQuery will also be distributed on millions of Nokia phones.

Defacto standards, I believe, are a good way to inform the development of real standards. Standards developed the other way around, at least in the tech industry, have had a habit of taking a very long time to reach end consumers… for example, how many decades has it taken for your average web user to gain access to a fully CSS2-compliant web browser? How many more decades will it take for OASIS’s OpenDocument format to supplant Microsoft Word and its *.doc files?

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a path that will lead to jQuery’s inclusion into the Javascript language, as well as initiatives that will improve jQuery’s performance.

I like the fact that Microsoft and Nokia are not trying to reinvent the wheel, and roll their own Javascript frameworks. Sun did this with Java Server Faces. A frequent lament with JSF is that it’s nearly impossible to customize any of the widgets. There is too much complex, custom Javascript, and the adoption of the frameworks used makes figuring out how to work with them difficult.

Also, as others have noted, this is the first time Microsoft itself is distributing an open-source project with one of their products. A sign of things to come?