I'm not the first person to report this, but Scott Guthrie recently announced that jQuery will ship with Visual Studio 10.  This is huge news.  When I talk to an audience about javascript, most people I talk to have never used a javascript library.  Now I'm excited to have the ability to talk at length about jQuery and not have people raise their eyebrows at me and tell me that they hate javascript.

Recently at the ASP Insiders Summit I asked how many people actually like coding in javascript.  About 6 people (out of 30) raised their hands.  I then asked, "How many of you use jQuery?"  The same 6 kept their hands in the air.  Postulate what you want, this can either mean:

jQuery makes you love javascript again.

or...

Those who love javascript, choose jQuery.

Though I won't laugh in your face, like some :), but I will gently suggest that if you aren't yet familiar with jQuery, now is the time to learn.  I can recommend jQuery in Action if you're serious about it, but a simple Google search will get you most of what you need.

The other reason why this is big news, is that soon you'll be able to open up product support issues with Microsoft about jQuery.  Let that sink in for a second.  An open source project, under the MIT license, will be fully supported by Microsoft.

I applaud Microsoft for making this decision.  It's not your typical Microsoft anymore.