The original design concept was for a web store framework I was working on.  I wanted each store be able to easily change their javascript based themes without making changes to the javascript files for the basic theme.  This made for a much easier file based deployment of new versions to each store.  The obvious downside is that you’re downloading lots of extra javascript, particularly if you’re turning features back off that were in the basic theme.  This type of functionality is only useful in certain cases, and is never the most efficient system possible with regards to performance and bandwidth, just maintainability.

This new release still maintains that basic functionality, but now I address a more common concern as well, applying themes to AJAX updates.  In order to support this, I’ve added several new features.

• $.themescript.exec now accepts a context parameter.  This can be a jQuery object or an HTML DOM element, just like the context to jQuery’s jQuery(selector, [context]) selector function.  All registered functions will receive this context as a parameter, and it will be automatically used as the context to selector-based theming to restrict the elements returned.

• themescript is a new function added to jQuery objects which allows you to execute the themescripts against a specific jQuery object.  $(‘#selector’).themescript() is equivalent to $.themescript.exec( $(‘#selector’) )

• themescript( url, [data], [callback] ) works just like the jQuery load method, except that it will automatically run themescripts against the updated HTML if the request is successful.

You can also easily add support for jQuery.themescript to ASP.Net AJAX partial page updates (a.k.a. UpdatePanels).  Just add this script code to your files and the themescripts will be automatically executed against any UpdatePanels which are changed during an asynchronous postback.

var prm = Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance();
prm.add_pageLoaded(function(sender, args) {
    var</span> updated = args.get_panelsUpdated();
    if</span> (updated && updated.length) {
        $.themescript.exec($(updated));
    }
});

Here are the links where you can access the GitHub repository or download the files:

GitHub
Download

All of this is great for the client side. But how do you define which scripts to include in the LABjs chain on the server side?

Since for work I primarily operate in ASP.Net, I’ve created an ASP.Net solution to the problem, LABjs.Net. This library provides two key controls, LabScriptManager and LabScriptManagerProxy. These controls loosely follow the behavior of the AJAX ScriptManager and ScriptManagerProxy controls, at least their script loading aspects.

Key supported features include:

1. Refer to script files using application relative paths (i.e. ~/js/jquery.min.js)
2. Load script files from assembly resources
3. Specify if debug or release scripts should be used, or use the debug setting from the web.config file
4. Ability to set any of the options provided by LABjs
5. Include wait() calls in the chain, and provide inline functions to be executed after the wait
6. Use LabScriptManagerProxy to add scripts and waits to the chain in content pages and user controls
7. Use LabActionGroup inside LabScriptManagerProxy to add script() calls at a specific point in the primary chain
8. LABjs debug and release versions are embedded in the DLL and automatically referenced, but you can opti0nally override this with your own URL
9. Experimental support for the cdnLABjs library I am working on, which provides automatic failover to a local file if a file fails to load from a CDN (for information about why, see Using CDN Hosted jQuery with a Local Fall-back Copy)

Below you will find links to the current release candidate, 1.0rc1.  Please review it and give me any feedback you might have.

Download Binaries
Readme File
Git Repository

Update 2/8/2010: Updated to version 1.0rc4

jquery.ui.spinbuttons Git Repository

The only downside of using jQuery with ASP.Net is the lack of integration.  They now include a vsdoc file which helps with Intellisense, but there’s a long way to go.  For simplicity, I’m still using Microsoft’s AJAX code for their page methods and UpdatePanels, and primarily using jQuery for the client side controls and animations.

I’ve written a library to help with the creation of ASP.Net server controls that utilize jQuery.  I’m calling it, very creatively, jQuery.Net.  You can access the code and binaries for the library on github, the link’s below.

jQuery.Net Git Repository