If you mention the word,"Microsoft", to me, "Windows" and "Closed Source Development" will pop up in my head. I won't think about much relationship with "Opensource" and "Microsoft". But Actually, maybe, there are some changes. Microsoft committed to the jQuery projects. I watched the video on Channel 9. They built three plug-ins for jQuery. They are jQuery Templates,
jQuery Data Link and jQuery Globalization API.

I love jQuery Templates most! It looks like a dynamic data repeater. I can use the code like the following to build a table for displaying data:

Code

That is so great! That is very useful for building ajax tool, such as ajax data paging!

For jQuery Datalink, it can blind the fields to the data object. That sounds useful as well. However, in the most of cases, I won't do any hard blind the fields to the data objects. That is not very flexible.

jQuery Globalization is very impressive too! It can localize all currencies and date time for most of cultures. That is a huge job. That needs backing with a big firm! If your application can supports multi-languages, that is very useful for you!

Those plug-ins sounds very helpful!

Reference:
Channel 9
jQuery Blog