Impackt 08 — Interview with John Resig

John Resig is a JavaScript Evangelist for the Mozilla Corporation and the author of the book 'Pro Javascript Techniques.' He's also the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library. He's currently located in Boston, MA.

Packt: Drupal 6.0 has jQuery in its core. How do you feel about your library becoming an integral part of other systems?

John Resig: I'm excited by it. Wordpress is another big open source system that's adopted us as their library-of-choice - and there are more on the horizon. These install bases have been fantastic for getting us new developers to try our library, which is good considering that we have a pretty high level of stickiness (once a user starts using it, they're very likely to stick with it).

Packt: jQuery UI — how excited are you about this new plugin and how do you see it broadening the appeal of jQuery?

JR: I'm pretty excited I think we're going to be seeing some great things from the jQuery UI team here in the upcoming months. A big point for jQuery is that its users end up needing some component (say, a slider) and if we aren't able to provide one then they'll be forced to use another library to make it happen. It's very important to our longevity to be able to provide a set of robust components to complement users' applications.

Packt: Within a year and a half, jQuery has managed to equal, and even surpass in some cases, the popularity of some of the top libraries like Dojo, prototype, Mochikit, and YUI. How did jQuery manage to do this in such a short period of time?

JR: A lot of hard work. Although, I think there's just a lot that we lucked out on and got right: stuff like the selector engine, small filesize, and chaining. Our popularity has caused the other frameworks to scramble in attempt to duplicate them. But what's good here is that the users end up winning. They get better features, in a better package, that's ultimately easier to use.

Packt: What does the future hold for jQuery?

JR: I feel that, at this point, the API to jQuery is pretty solid. There's very few things that I'm itching to add to core. Instead, we're starting to focus on matters of code clarity (variable names, cross-browser bug fixes, etc.) and speed. Polishing core to a solid sheen would be the best thing possible for us, right now. Beyond matters of code we want to try improving education surrounding jQuery - better tutorials, better walkthroughs, and more examples. In the end we just want the best possible experience for the jQuery user: That's the ultimate future for jQuery.

Packt: Thanks John.

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