Its seems that JQuery has definitely secured its hold on the JavaScript client toolset. There have been some interesting new extensions that are interesting.

• JQuery visualize – Trivially converts an HTML table into a graph using 1 line of code “$(‘table’).visualize();”. Definitely read this one, I’m not entirely sold on the single line approach – but bang for buck its definitely up there. As you would expect it has been tested under IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 – so interoperability is good
• JQueryui.com – jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications. The thing I like most with the JavaScript tools is that you can view the demos right in your browser.  JQueryUI has the concept of  Theming which is nice for web developers looking to allow their users to change the look of the applications.

Pretty cool stuff,

Gareth

Or need to check that what you have done in the performance area matches others? Here are some really good pages for improving your web page rendering:

• Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
  • Definitely read this article (all the way), even if you think you know the first couple of recommendations there are some less well known ones towards the end.
• How we improved performance on Google Code
  • This covers how Google Code performance was increased – its always interesting when you see how “Giants” solve common problems.
• Yahoo! YSlow
  • YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool.
• Exceptional Performance
  • Yahoo!’s Exceptional Performance team evangelizes best practices for improving web performance.

And for any of those out there using YUI the “YUI 3.0.0 beta 1 Available for Download” has just been made available.

Gareth