As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have been going through a process of reviewing various JavaScript libraries and frameworks. So yesterday I started looking at jQuery. And I have to admit what I saw was impressive. Not that it does anything that other libraries can’t do. But rather that the design of the library is wonderfully simple while still being powerful. Within about an hour of reviewing the core jQuery library I felt comfortable with it.

So today I decided to toss out my own home rolled library and go with jQuery. Although the custom library I wrote was working fine, I decided the cross browser issues that are bound to come up in testing would be easier to deal with if I used jQuery. So the Chatkik internal chat application has been complete refactored with jQuery. The chat container still uses YUI (which I also like but just isn’t quite as elegant as jQuery for simple tasks).

That being said, if you find something failing to work that used to work in Chatkik, this change is likely the reason. Just let me know and I’ll take care of it ASAP.