This post is mostly for my own reference, but maybe you'll find it useful, too.

Typically, most of my time involves writing server side code, but lately I have been force myself to get better with my client-side scripting.  Up until now, I have put a lot of faith in the ASP.NET AJAX libraries and Control Toolkit.  But, I am a skeptic of just dropping a control on the page and thinking everything is okay.  When I view the HTML source, I usually end up with a bunch of really long .axd urls in the header of the page, and several $create() functions at the bottom of the page to link the controls to the javascript.  The real problem comes when you are adding Ajax Controls inside of a GridView or Repeater.

So, I started reading about object oriented javascript.  Of course, I needed a good library to help out, and like many others, I have found jQuery to be pretty powerful, but it alone is a little tricky to figure out at first. I am making progress, and below are some of the resources that have proved helpful.

Books

Ajax In Action (Crane/Pascarello) - I had this book nearby and it got me started thinking about how to do object-oriented programming (appendix is a good start).

Tutorials

An Introduction to jQuery - a two part in-depth tutorial by Rick Strahl.  I like this one because he explains how jQuery is built, and why it is significant.

How To Author jQuery Plugins - on the jQuery website.  I'm not ready to write my own yet, but want my simple tests to model the plugin architecture.

Working With jQuery Part 1 - 3-part article on IBM's site. 

Useful jQuery Plugins

Tooltip - author: jquery - Once I learned some jQuery basics the first thing I wanted to do was create a tooltip for some  links.