I am interested to see the community’s response to Microsoft’s contributions to jQuery.  I have been using jTemplates on and off in my apps for a while, but I will certainly check out the new templating plugins put forth by MS and explained here by Scott Guthrie.

It may be that some are against the very idea of a company like Microsoft being involved with jQuery, and Scott explains the process with the following:

“jQuery has a fantastic developer community, and a very open way to propose suggestions and make contributions.  Microsoft is following the same process to contribute to jQuery as any other member of the community.”

I think we can take this in one of two ways: 

1. It’s great that Microsoft sees themselves as a part of a greater community that they can support.
2. It’s the first step in Microsoft’s attempt to usurp the community and have greater control over the web, it’s standards, and it’s developer community.

Personally, I believe Microsoft sees the world (and the web) differently from how they did back when IE had more than %80 of the browser market.  Now, in order to keep it’s development products relevant, they are pushing Asp.Net (as they have been for a few years) towards a more open strategy that’s more “web-like” in my opinion.

These contributions to jQuery are a good thing, I think.  Now, let’s go try out these new plug-ins and see if they stack up…

more later - joel