Thanks for the great overview, and your “screen-scraping” demo was great, gave me a lot of new ideas. I hope you will be able to come back and give an update on new jQuery technologies, or on some interesting plugins.

Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it. First off I don’t think jquery is replacing flash. Flash’s biggest competitor is Silverlight and they are in a battle that is different than what jquery is doing. That’s not to say that people aren’t using jQuery for the basic animation.

As I said at the meeting and I think people agreed. We’d prefer to use jQuery instead of Flash where possible, because, it’s lighter, works on iphone, and it doesn’t require a plugin.

Now, on to jQuery. jQuery is definitely not going to replace javascript, because its built on javascript. jQuery is what we call a framework, and is really designed to abstract the lower level difficulties away from javascript and make your life easier. It’s nice to have a basic understanding of how javascript works as a language, but you can easily get by with just a knowledge of how jquery plugins and syntax work. As for things getting cut, jQuery has many competitors so I can’t say that they’re going to be the leader, I personally favor them.

Your final question about where to learn and stay up with the market. I would recommend taking a peak at jQuery as I assume you’ll find it easier to work with the plain old javascript. In addition to the links in the presentation Rick Strahl has a really nice intro article (http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/jQuery/default.aspx). I do feel that jquery has created an attitude in the web development industry of “raising the bar” and using standardized quality coding and practices, and I commend them for that, so as a new web developer be prepared to keep up with the standards and always keep learning.