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jQuery 1.5 Released

jQuery 1.5 was released today.  jQuery was one of the most important breakthroughs for me as a designer.  I was an expert in HTML and CSS, but I was not able to program.  My career aspirations were pointing towards design and jQuery was the perfect lever to get more out of the web.

I spent most of 2006 working on Intuit’s web sites as a designer and web developer.  I also spent that year contributing to the jQuery mailing list.  It was a magical time, the beginning.  I knew, without a doubt, that jQuery was something special.  I didn’t make any money off of it, but I am extremely proud of my small role in helping it out in the beginning.  These are the products I live for.

Lately, my web development skills have been getting pretty rusty.  I spend most of my time in PowerPoint.  I miss the days of figuring out a jQuery script and answering posts on the mailing list.  I miss the kind of problem solving that you only get with web development.  I wish I used jQuery more.  Even though I am somewhat removed these days, I still am proud to see that little script evolving and growing and making a dent in the universe.  I hope I get to work on more products like that in the future.

Comments

2 responses to “jQuery 1.5 Released”

  1. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    (I understand that I may have no idea what I’m talking about, but…), I went to the JQuery sites (Jquery.org and jquery.com) and neither one seems to utilize the coolness that you have shown jquery to be (at least through your examples in the past). Shouldn’t their sites be the cutting edge of programming or at least something special. Or would regular people like me never know to look for jquery (without your guidance) and people who know what it is understand the intricacies of their site better than I do. It’s like if I took Molly to Disneyland and all she saw a bunch of generic princesses and maybe one snow white, it is Disney and we should expect something special. Is Jquery Disney or just Chucky Cheese?

    Or perhaps showing off would just be tacky and look unprofessional, hmmm.

    Reply
    1. Glen Lipka Avatar
      Glen Lipka

      I first started working on websites with HTML in 1994. That’s all their was, but it was/is awesome. Table tags were released in Netscape 2.0 (1995) and that made a HUGE difference in how you built a web page. Then, CSS came around (1997) and revolutionized everything about how you make a website.

      jQuery (2006) was the last big change in how you did things on the web. It’s an open source piece of JavaScript, not very long, but incredibly powerful. It brought interactivity to web pages without learning how to program.

      63% of the Alexa top 100,000 websites that use a javascript framework (roughly half of them do), choose jQuery. (source) Prototype is the second most popular with 13%.

      Before jQuery all of the web pages I made were either flat (no interactivity) or required a programmer to make something special. With jQuery I can make something special on my own, without knowing how to program JavaScript or Flash. (Some samples)

      Reply

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