We have two pieces of fantastic, albeit serendipitous, news today: Both Microsoft and Nokia are taking the major step of adopting jQuery as part of their official application development platform. Not only will they be using it for their corporate development but they will be providing it as a core piece of their platform for developers to build with.

Microsoft is looking to make jQuery part of their official development platform. Their JavaScript offering today includes the ASP.NET Ajax Framework and they're looking to expand it with the use of jQuery. This means that jQuery will be distributed with Visual Studio (which will include jQuery intellisense, snippets, examples, and documentation).

Additionally Microsoft will be developing additional controls, or widgets, to run on top of jQuery that will be easily deployable within your .NET applications. jQuery helpers will also be included in the server-side portion of .NET development (in addition to the existing helpers) providing complementary functions to existing ASP.NET AJAX capabilities.

Nokia is looking to use jQuery to develop applications for their WebKit-based Web Run-Time. The run-time is a stripped-down browser rendering engine that allows for easy, but powerful, application development. This means that jQuery will be distributed on all Nokia phones that include the web run-time.

To start Nokia will be moving a number of their applications to work on the run-time (such as Maps) and building them using jQuery. jQuery will become part of their widget development platform, meaning that any developer will be able to use jQuery in the construction of widgets for Nokia phones.

Microsoft and Nokia aren't looking to make any modifications to jQuery (both in the form of code or licensing) - they simply wish to promote its use as-is. They've recognized its position as the most popular JavaScript library and wish to see its growth and popularity continue to flourish.

In fact their developers will begin to help contribute back to the jQuery project by proposing patches, submitting test cases, and providing comprehensive testing against their runtimes. As with any contribution that comes in to the jQuery project it'll be closely analyzed, reviewed, and accepted or rejected, based upon its merits, by the jQuery development team - no free ride will be given.

A significant level of testing will be added to the project in this respect. The jQuery test suite is already integrated into the test suites of Mozilla and Opera and this move will see a significant level of extra testing being done on Internet Explorer and WebKit - above-and-beyond what is already done by the jQuery team.

The whole jQuery team is quite excited by these prospects and wishes to take this opportunity to welcome both companies to the jQuery community. It's phenomenal to see these two, major, corporations take the large step of using jQuery as a base for their, and their developers, future development. They will join a long list of happy jQuery users, including Google, Intel, IBM, Intuit, Reuters, and many others.

Update: Blogs posts by Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman, both at Microsoft, have posts on the subject matter from their perspective.

Even though I'm a recent Mac convert, I still keep up with all of the trends in the PC world. One of the magazines that I pick up religiously is MaximumPC which always has great articles on the PC world. Another cool thing about the magazine is that they always include a CD full of sweet software.

When I got this month's issue, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the CD was chock full of Firefox add-ons! Check out the pics:

It included many of the add-ons currently on the AMO Recommended list such as PicLens (now called Cooliris) & FoxyProxy as well as some other cool add-ons such as Panic & GSpace.

In addition, they included a bunch of Firefox themes (e.g. Aero Fox & PimpZilla) for good measure.

I've been getting this magazine for quite some time and haven't seen them publish add-ons before so this is a pretty good indication of how important add-ons are to making the browser your own custom experience.

Now, MaximumPC is really a bit of a techie magazine but I do hope that this helps to introduce Mozilla add-ons to the more mainstream user. When I chat with non-techie folks about Firefox, the majority still don't know what add-ons are. This is something that I'm working to fix and so I'd like to hear your suggestions for spreading the word about add-ons to the mainstream crowd that has absolutely no interest in Firebug, TamperData or ColorZilla.

So I ask, how can I better reach the average Firefox user to educate them about Mozilla's add-on ecosystem?

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

I really want to reach out to the web and share some of the awesome things that are happening within the Mozilla add-ons community and in looking at tools that I've used successfully in the past, I'd really have to single out Twitter as being the top medium for getting the word out.

So taking a cue from my work with the jQuery project, I've created a new Twitter account called @mozamo which will allow me to reach out to new and existing add-on users and developers in the hopes of providing as much useful information as possible. The hard part about using Twitter though is that getting a following tends to be driven mainly by word-of-mouth, hence the reason that I wanted to blog about it and make sure that the readers of my blog knew about this new resource.

I really do find that most people truly underestimate the Mozilla add-ons ecosystem and don't understand the breadth of investment that goes into making a successful add-ons. While many are developed by hobbyist, there's also a growing number of companies that are relying heavily on the Mozilla platform for the success of their business. It's been a real eye-opening experience interacting with these developers and I'm hoping that by broadcasting lots of information out, I can help to motivate more developers to participate in creating extensions that will make the Mozilla experience that much better.

So couple this with our Mozilla about:addons newsletter and I think we're providing some very good methods of getting the word out.

If you have other suggestions for reaching the add-ons audience, I'm all ears and would love to hear your suggestions.