Ever since I see the news that jQuery is going to incorporated into VS 2010 and be part of Microsoft AJAX library, I've starting to push jQuery in our team to adapt it and start consider alternatives when it comes to web app development.
If you are a hardcore ASP.NET Developer that never mess with anything else than Textboxes, checkboxes, buttons or anything else that's in the toolbox, then you need to consider jQuery as well!
jQuery is a very light weight javascript framework, that allows you to do DOM manipulation, animation, AJAX calls easily with just a 19K javascript file.
And the plug in system allows it to have a rich set of plugs in available for you to choose, and a lot of effects and features can be done in just 1-2 lines of code with the help of plugins.
The most common argument I find when I talk to my team about jQuery is that : Why do I need a javascript file to do whatever I can do already in ASP.NET or Microsoft AJAX Library Toolkit?
If you still ask that question, then you probably is missing out the mass sea of discussion in the ALT.NET world / or anyone that discusses about ASP.NET and how ASP.NET MVC is better (in some ways more complicated ofcourse).
We have to face it, ViewState and Postbacks are not our friends. They seem to work, and does what we want, but it never leaves your page nor do you have most choice if you are developing ASP.NET.
Especially if you're starting to use UpdatePanels in your page, you'll see that all your viewState / eventvalidation is going to be sent over the wire and back. And it also eliminates postback, which will keep your page state and reduce some unnecessary life cycles.
The performance, and user experience improvement alone is worth learning jQuery and put it into your ASP.NET web app.
There are plenty of examples online, so I'm not going to do another one. But I'm just hoping to share to everyone to start thinking about how to leverage client-side development, especialyl with the help of jQuery, lots of necessary data and ugly asp.net effects can be eliminated!