Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework
soliptic writes "The jQuery blog today announced that 'Both Microsoft and Nokia are taking the major step of adopting jQuery as part of their official application development platform.' So the open-source javascript framework will be shipped with Visual Studio and ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman notes: 'It's Open Source, and we'll use it and ship it via its MIT license, unchanged. If there's changes we want, we'll submit a patch just like anyone else.'" There's also a story at eWeek about the decision.
Embrace, extend and then try to squeeze out the vanilla version though?
Additionally Microsoft will be developing additional controls, or widgets, to run on top of jQuery that will be easily deployable within your .NET applications. jQuery helpers will also be included in the server-side portion of .NET development (in addition to the existing helpers) providing complementary functions to existing ASP.NET AJAX capabilities.
Javascript frameworks deal with the major hurdles of modern web design: Abstracting browser differences, and avoiding reinventing the wheel with the kind of AJAXy effects that are increasingly more common these days.
I wonder how this will affect Prototype. It's always had different design goals than jQuery, but will this diminish it's popularity?
Also, will the jQuery API eventually be integrated into the browser instead of being a huge JS blob for every page?
.: Max Romantschuk
hell freezes over and pigs fly!
To have code submitted by all interested parties, since once it's open, it doesn't matter where the code came from.
All thing will one day be open, resistance is simply stupidity!
MIT license is not a source-required license. Companies may sell, close it up, whatever they wish so long as they continue to give credit to the original product.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Hopefully they will fix JQuery to make it stop abusing HTTP headers, and act more standard compliant. It is one of the major issues with jQuery that it transmits data in the headers where it doesn't belong. Among other things this breaks at various point in various browsers; 4k in IE, 8k in Firefox, plus it breaks most types of HTTP caches.
it's slow, buggy, and prone to being abused. why are we still using it?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Coincidentally, I was just looking through frameworks to use for a new project today and decided against using jQuery in favour of prototype and/or mootools.
jQuery has a very nice website, but implementations seems slow and clunky on my ubuntu/firefox set-up.
Why jQuery?
There's another way to kill such things: decommoditizing.
Make the thing so complex that no one is willing/able to move anymore. Watch this happening in the "open" W3C standards, in (M)OOXML, nearly everywhere nowadays (WebDAV, anyone?).
Kind of a denial-of-service attack. And the big corps have tons of resources to throw at this kind of game. They will always win.
The only defense is a Benevolent Dictator With Good Taste (TM)
jQuery announced that the next version of their popular library will leverage the power and versatility of Microsoft(tm)(r) Silverlight(r) for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
"Freetards and other goddamn hippies need not apply." said jQuery's new maintainer, an oddly familiar, angry fat man. Going by the name of Stephan Ballmerano; he sports a beard, dark glasses, cape, and top-hat.
"I have done it before, and I'll do it again. I'm going to fucking kill the GPL!" Ballmerano replied to a question on licensing, before lifting the top-hat to mop his bald head with a hankie.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Considering some of the smaller scale, and a few of the larger, OSS projects have code so badly written, so badly commented that obfuscated javascript looks easy to read by comparison, how do you close a JavaScript project?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Sure, Microsoft has taken stuff that is under a liberal license in order to not have to write it themselves - the BSD TCP/IP stack from back in the day comes to mind.
But I believe this is something different. Even though this probably gives them some code they don't have to write, this is just to use a popular and growing JavaScript library to give ASP.NET MVC some much needed street cred, especially among open source leaning developers.
Though jQuery is better as a general JavaScript library than anything they've come up with, they've had no trouble writing this stuff for themselves before. This is a non-Microsoft developer focused thing that says: "We're cool! jQuery is in the box!" and tries to attract people to their stack by allowing them to leverage their skills with a library they've used elsewhere instead of some MS-only library.
I'm just getting into the use of JavaScript for server and client interactions. I've been pretty impressed with what's available when you take the class-like approach. For the most part, I have had no issues with JavaScript browser differences (well, back to IE 6 anyway) It appears jQuery would make my scripts smaller, but I can do that by packing my scripts too. Why should I use a library that redefines what JavaScript does so well already on its own?
I was a little bemused by the Microsoft guy's blog... last screenshot before the comments.
He needs to demo something non-trivial, so he switches to Firefox and Firebug.
Tell me about it, Scott!
Information wants to be beer.
Apparently this news brought so much traffic to jquery.com the site has been inaccessible for me for more than two hours. !!
Congratulations to everybody who has worked on jQuery!
I have used jQuery extensively and it is easy to learn and easy to handle. In fact, I had been using JavaScript for quite a while before jQuery, but after I started using jQuery, read some source, wrote a few plugins, etc. (even some patches, including performance related ones), I feel my understanding of the weird and advanced things in JavaScript is also much much better - and it didn't require any hard work or thinking :)
In comparison, before jQuery I used Dojo, which still gives me a headache just to think about. This is now some time ago though, so I will not bash Dojo as it's quite likely my specific problems with it have long been solved. However, Dojo never 'invited' me to become better at JavaScript myself.
All in all, jQuery is a great tool, it makes JavaScript fun again, and it makes me feel sorry I'm hardly doing any webdevving anymore (imagine that!)
Just saying until they act, we can not guarantee based solely on the license what they will do. They do say they will, but the legal obligations upon them do not mandate it.
MIT license is fine, but you cannot predict traditional open-source sensibilities solely from an announcement mentioning the licens..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Was evaluating JS frameworks for an open-source project, and ext js was precluded due to license. The project was BSD licensed, and thus neither the commercial nor GPL license was appropriate.
I understand their viewpoint (trying to make a business and community framework), but MIT licensed jQuery is much more amenable to other licenses.
I've always thought software vendors when doing open source would prefer GPL on stuff they put out (force commercial adopters to use a more commercial license), and that software vendors leeching on the community prefer BSD (lower obligation on them).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Nokia does the work and M$ stands on the sidelines passive-aggressively finding ways to throw sand in the gears and share in the glory of anything they are unable to block.
It's great that Nokia is working on jQuery, but the leaders are dumb funkers if they think that they will be the first to come out the better for a partnership with M$. JQuery could be good for Nokia if they are not chumps for M$.
I think the main reason for jQuery and Prototype is to insulate the programmer from browser idiosyncrasies. And Microsoft's IE (mostly IE6) is the main cause of them!!!
I just had horrifying visions of MS jQuery .Net Visual Studio Professional.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
On the speed front: that isn't sufficient enough of a reason, and here's why:
On the "extendable/modular" front: I don't feel this is sufficient either, and here's why:
MT and jQuery, in my opinion, are the best two frameworks available today for javascript developers - and I would like to say personally that I don't know anything about dojo, so unfortunately I have left it out of consideration. However, from my understanding, jQuery has more educational resources available both online and in print. Why? I don't really have the answer to that question. It could be that people who are inclined to write books about the subject like jQuery's style of coding more (although I like mooTools more), or perhaps it could be that jQuery is more "javascript-oriented", while mooTools tries to make javascript "object-class-oriented".
.NET anyway.
One point I will concede is that jQuery allows multiple versions of itself to be instantiated on the same page, while mooTools really does not - although you can instantiate versions of mooTools in iframes and get away with it. However, personally, I prefer mooTools' approach. Having more than one version of a framework on a webpage - to me - is a maintainence nightmare, although I'm *positive* it sounds *delightful* to buisness people. Hence, I believe these two reasons (multiple instantiations, publications) are why jQuery was picked.
Overall, though, I'm not miffed. jQuery is my second-favorite framework, and I don't develop much
that's good enough reason for me to never use it.
but all the shitty microsoft-based sites that were thrown up in a day that will be including jQuery UI elements. Users will begin to see jQuery elements and associate them with shitty websites and they will become considered tacky/cliche despite their quality and usefulness. This is what I fear.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie